IS TO BE
STER OF THE WORLD?

A. M. UjDOVICI

58LV

Who is to be ^Master of the World?

t

tVho is to be 3VIaster
of the World?

aAn Introduction to the 'Philosophy
of Friedrich Nietzsche

by

ANTHONY M. LUD0F1CI

Author of" Nietzsche's Life and fVorks " and " Nietzsche and Art"

With Introduction by Dr OSCAR LEVY

Author of " The Revival of Aristocracy" etc*

T. N. FOULIS

13 & 15 FREDERICK STREET
EDINBURGH : & LONDON

1 9 1 4

U55&L.V

Of the second impression of
one thousand copies this
is number

.385

[All rights reserved]

TO HIS

Brother George
the author affectionately dedicates
these lectures

ABBREVIATIONS USED IN REFERRING TO
NIETZSCHE'S WORKS.

D.D. = The Dawn of Day.

Z. = Thus Spake Zaratbustra.

G.E. = Beyond Good and Evil.

G.M. = The Genealogy of Morals.

C.W. = Volume VIII. in the German Edition, and
the English Volume containing: — "The
Case of Wagner"; "Nietzsche contra
Wagner" ; " The Twilight of the Idols " ;
" The Antichrist."

INTRODUCTION

Dear Mr Ludovici, —

You want me to write an introduction to your lec-
tures ? Well, you may have one — you may have one in
this letter, which I allow you to reproduce verbatim in
your book.

To begin with then: I like your lectures — I think
them, in their lucidity, even the best I have read in
your language — but I hardly like the notion of your
giving lectures on Nietzsche, because I think it contrary
to the spirit of your great master to do this. I think it
wrong to instruct people — if you have something to in-
struct them with. People ought to be instructed by
those who have nothing to say, nothing to give, nothing
to teach, nothing to do. These teachers of nothing do
more good than you : they make us slaves, and you know
that according to your master, all higher culture must
be based upon slavery. Why then interfere with the
natural process of enslavement, of stultification, of
education which is going on around us ? Why not act
up to your Machiavellian principles, and rather lecture

on the drama, socialism, folklore, the sins of the upper

ix

X

Introduction

classes, or the sanitation of May fair? Why make a
creed popular, which ought to remain esoteric?

But you wish to gain friends to ** the Cause." Do you
think to make them in a lecture-room? I doubt it.
Were you converted in a lecture-room? I belong to a
race whose members, when they wanted to know any-
thing, went into the desert and not to the lecture-room,
and you, dear Mr Ludovici, told me yourself that, after
a book of Nietzsche's had once fallen into your hands,
you found no rest or peace until you had gone to Ger-
many, learnt German, and thought and meditated
there — in the solitude of a foreign country — on Nietz-
sche's teaching until you understood it. I myself have
often, and unobserved by you, seen you in the British
Museum walking about in the depth of thought, and I
liked you for it. You think that many of your audience
will be able or willing to undergo the hardships, not to
say the danger, of your thought? In an age of comfort,
of ease, of peace, of happiness, of humanitarian and
Christian ideals, you will look out in vain for an intel-
lectual sportsman like yourself.

And have you no pity on those few who perhaps love
sport and danger, and who perhaps may be willing to
follow you ? Will they not be like yourself, seamen upon
an unknown sea, exposed to all the inclemency of the
weather, to frightful fogs and terrible storms, forced to
watch, day and night, for dangerous rocks, which are

Introduction

xi

marked on no map yet, and only upheld by the feeble
hope, that the German Columbus, after all, must have
been right : that there must be a new land somewhere
beyond, and that the looming coast-line there, upon the
horizon, must be that land ? Why drag others after you,
who perhaps, after a few experiences upon the high sea
of the new philosophical thought, will repent and cry
for the land and the fleshpots of old England? People
who in their despair may jump overboard? People who
in their agony may go down on their knees and cry out :
" My God, my God, why have I forsaken Thee? " Have
you no pity for all their agonies, their doubts, their in-
ternal explosions? But I forgot, you have no pity —
pity is not a part of your master's creed! After all you
are perhaps more of a Nietzschean than I thought, and
it may after all be right to lecture on Nietzsche — because
it is so cruel.

Another word ! A personal but important word ! You
are young and the sort of fellow the women, who form
the principal part of audiences in your country, will
listen to. They will pretend to understand — women are
very clever in pretending to understand. Instead of
finding yourself upon a new continent you may, there-
fore, land in matrimony and then get back all your
lectures — free of charge — by the lecturing sex par ex-
cellence, women. Do not listen to them. Do not conde-
scend. Don't marry yet. Remember that even the

xii Introduction

apostles of the old creed, although followed by women,
did not marry them. Remember that you too have to
propagate a gospel — and not a race, and that even the
propagation of the race, if it is to be worth while, can
only take place after the propagation of the gospel.
— Yours sincerely,

Oscar Levy.

i Talbot Mansions,

Museum Street, W.C.

WHO IS TO BE MASTER
OF THE WORLD?

i

Nietzsche: The Immoralist*

I am going to speak to you of Friedrich Nietzsche — the
Immoralist. A philosopher more difficult to under-
stand, and yet more full of riches for those who do
understand him, it would be hard to find.

Why should I wish to speak to you of Nietzsche ? The
literature which has grown round his name and phil-
osophy is already enormous. If you have read a third of
it, you are already informed concerning him.

Nietzsche died but eight years ago, and he is now one
of the most striking figures of modern European phil-
osophy. It is with the deepest regret, however, that the
inquirer into his life and works, gradually realises how
completely and often maliciously, he has been misin-
terpreted and misjudged; — not only by ignorant com-
mentators and by many of those learned professors who
have been lured to the exposition of his works by the
latter's inherent fascination, but even by his best and
oldest friends as well.

* Delivered at the University of London on November 25th, 1908.
A

2

Nietzsche

That is why I wish to speak to you of Friedrich
Nietzsche : because he has been misrepresented, and it
were well for you to know him as he is ; — indeed, it is
a pressing necessity that you should know him as

he is.

" Mine enemies have grown strong and have dis-
torted the face of my teaching," he says, " so that my
dearest friends must be ashamed of the gifts I gave
them."*

"... like a wind I shall one day blow amidst them
and take away their breath with my spirit; thus my
future willeth it.

" Verily a strong wind is Zarathustra for all low
lands; and his enemies and everything that spitteth
and speweth he counselleth with such advice: Beware
of spitting against the wind! "f

It is usual to begin a description, such as the one
undertaken in this paper, with a word-portrait of the
hero, or, at least, with a short biography. Now, the
first, despite its severe difficulties, it might have been
well to attempt, had there not been serious reasons for
doubting the reliability of existing writers on the sub-
ject ; % the second, however, the short biography, seemed
to recommend itself to me even less than the first, and
for the following reasons: — the subject I have to treat
is a big one, it would therefore have been necessary to

compress the biography into a compass so small, that it

<

* Z. , "The Child with the Looking-glass."
f Z., "Of the Rabble."

X This was written before Nietzsche's Eccc Homo had ap-
peared.

The Immoralist

3

could have proved little more than a wearisome chain
of dates, and this thankless interruption I wished, if
possible, to avoid.

In view of these considerations, I ventured to depart
from the usual methods, and to proceed at once with
the discussion of the main theme.

Some people think themselves justified in forming an
impression of a man from his works. However deep-
rooted this belief may be, which a moment's personal
intercourse with any great man quickly proves to be
pure superstition, in Nietzsche's case, it is completely
upheaved. With him, as with most other authors, we
must make the distinction between the man and the
writer. He himself warns people against the error of
neglecting to do so * : — he himself was the living refuta-
tion of that error.

The most that may be said in all security, at the
present stage of our knowledge of him, is that he was a
modern Heraclitus — a resuscitated Heraclitus, who
lived in Europe for fifty-six years of the nineteenth
century, and who died at its close. Nietzsche himself
would not have been averse to this comparison ; he con-
stantly speaks in high terms of the noble Ephesian, j
and sought to establish a not insignificant number of
his doctrines.

Like Heraclitus, Nietzsche's muses were " Solitude
and the beauty of Nature "; lik^ Heraclitus, " he was a

* G.E., p. 245. C.W., p. 86.

f See especially pp. 27-43, Vol. X. of Nietzsche's Complete
Works, published by Naumann.

4

Nietzsche

man of abounding pride and self-confidence who sat at
no master's feet," and like him, too, he was a poet-
philosopher whom we might surname " the Obscure."

Obscure — why? What advantage does a philosopher
derive from obscurity? Are not the mass of foolish
books that have been written about him evidence
enough of the futility — nay, the positive danger — of
this very obscurity ?

Mr Burnet, in his Early Greek Philosophers, says of
Heraclitus: " Perhaps we may go so far as to admit
that his contempt for the mass of mankind made him
somewhat indifferent to the requirements of his
readers." We shall see that Nietzsche speaks of himself
in practically the same way: — " I will have railings
round my thoughts," he says, " and even round my
words, that swine and enthusiasts may not break into
my gardens."*

" I draw around me circles and holy boundaries.
Ever fewer mount with me ever higher mountains, "f

Nietzsche had little patience with the mass of man-
kind. The " many-too-many " — " die viel-zu-vielen " —
the German called them. But it must not be supposed,
as many have supposed, that these words express any-
thing more than impatience. We constantly come across
passages in his works wherein he most clearly empha-
sises the respect he felt for the mediocre, and for the
necessity of mediocrity; and, in the Antichrist, he actu-
ally goes so far as to declare it unworthy of a deep mind

* Z., " Of the Three Evil Ones, ' IT 2.
t Z., "Of Old and New Tables," IT 19.

The Immoralist

5

to take any exception at all to mediocrity as medio-
crity.* " A high civilisation," he says, " is a pyramid,
it can only stand upon a broad basis ; it has for a first
pre-requisite a strongly and soundly consolidated
mediocrity." f

In discussing a philosopher so many-sided as Nietz-
sche, who sinks with such precision to the very root of
whatever subject he gives his attention to, the very
utmost I can hope to do, in these lectures, is to rouse
your curiosity as to his works, or incite you to a deeper
study of them.

In attempting to do this, I shall endeavour, where
possible to let him address you in his own words, that
you may hear his views, free from the colouring an in-
termediary— however unwillingly — might lend them;
and, also, that you may listen to his thoughts, expressed
with as much of their original fire and beauty, as it was
possible for a translation to retain.

It has been said by many — more particularly by his
fellow-countrymen — that Nietzsche is too dogmatic;
that he gives scarcely any reasons for his opinions, and
that his philosophy therefore bears a dictatorial and
unconvincing stamp.

The two following passages, one taken from The Twi-
light of the Idols, and the other from Thus Spake Zara-
thustra, will show us that Nietzsche was not only aware
of this particular method in his works, but, also, had
his reasons for it.

In the first we read : —

* C.W., p. 342. f Ibid. pp. 341, 342.

6

Nietzsche

" With Socrates Greek taste veers round in favour of
dialectics. What really happens then? In the first place,
superior taste is vanquished, the mob gets the upper
hand along with dialectics. Previous to Socrates, dia-
lectic manners were repudiated in good society: they
were regarded as improper manners, they compromised
The youths were warned against them. Besides, all such
modes of presenting reasons were distrusted. Honest
things, like honest men, do not carry their reasons in
their hands in such fashion. That which requires to be
proved is little worth. All the world over, where
authority still belongs to good usage, where one com-
mands— not demonstrates, the dialectician is a sort of
buffoon : he is laughed at, he is not taken seriously.

" We choose dialectics when we have no other means.
. . . Nothing is more easily wiped away than the effect
of a dialectician: that is proved by the experience of
every assembly where speeches are made. It can only
be a last defence in the hands of such as have no other
weapon left. It is necessary to have to extort one's
right; otherwise one makes no use of dialectics."*

In Thus Spake Zarathustra we meet with another
reason. One of his disciples has just asked him why he
said that poets lie too much.

" Why," Zarathustra replies. " Thou askest why? I
am not of those who may be asked for their whys."

M Is mine experience of yesterday, forsooth? It is
long ago that I found by experience the reasons of mine
opinions.

* C.W., pp. no, in.

The Immoralist

7

" Should I not require to be a very barrel of memory
if perforce I must have my reasons with me?

" Even to keep mine opinions is too much for me;
and many a bird flieth away."¥

Thus, Nietzsche maintained, that to prove is to plead,
to plead is to beg, and that he, at all events, did not
wish to be a beggar.

Albeit, strictly as he adhered to this principle in the
composition of Thus Spake Zarathustra, this book was
so grossly misunderstood when its earlier parts ap-
peared, that, in the end, he resolved partly to abandon
the proud non-dialectic position for the semi-dialectic
one adopted in his later works.

One may ask: why, as English people should we
concern ourselves at all about this German philo-
sopher?

Is it enough that many great men have found it
worth their while to give him a respectful hearing, or
that his countrymen are beginning to read and learn
him in grim earnest ? Is it enough that the enlightened
Government of France thought it incumbent upon them
to encourage the French translators of his works, by
subscribing to that translation ?

It is for you to decide whether these reasons are
sufficient to urge you to turn to him.

Nietzsche says: — " My philosophy reveals the trium-
phant thought through which all other systems of
thought must ultimately go under. It is the great
disciplinary thought: those races that cannot bear it

* Z., "Of Poets."

8

Nietzsche

are doomed; those which regard it as the greatest
blessing are destined to rule."*

He here speaks of races; he realises that the con-
sensus of public opinion constitutes the philosophy of a
country, and guides that country's destinies; and he
speaks so solemnly of the new teaching he offers us,
that it may not be amiss to ask, whether this is pre-
cisely a time when a new philosophy, given to the world
with words of such earnest warning, ought to be
treated lightly or condemned unheard?

In Germany, Nietzsche was for years admired for his
style alone. People did not take him seriously. They
would speak of him as the great " Epigrammatist " or
" Sentencer." If one ventured to make an inquiry con-
cerning his Ethics, his Sociology or his Metaphysics,
one was rebuked, and not always delicately; for his
would-be critics did not refrain from pruning, what
they held to be his most seditious paradoxes, of all
their pregnant context, in order to carry their point.
"It is for his style that we read Nietzsche," the
Germans would say.

Things have changed.

They are now beginning to read him for other than
" style " reasons. For years they refused to listen to
what he told them in The Twilight of the Idols: — " My
ambition is to say in ten sentences what every one else
says in a whole book, — what everyone else does not say
in a whole book." . . .f

* Vol. XV. p. 403, Nietzsche's Complete Works, published by
Naumann. t C.W., 221.

The I M MORALIST

9

Now they are taking it to heart ; they are beginning
to see that his aphoristic style was but a form necessary
to coping with the difficulties attendant on the distribu-
tion of his overwhelming riches ; — it was the cheque-
book of the wealthy man who cannot spare the time to
count out separate coins. But it was only a form, and,
excellent though it undoubtedly is, the ideas to which
it served but as a means, were ultimately recognised
as the still more valuable end.

Germany is now studying Nietzsche, and, if we are to
take his solemn note of warning seriously, is it not high
time that we, in England, also began reading and
learning him ?

He was an earnest man. He took his calling very
seriously. Like Heraclitus, he parted with his relatives
and friends, and lived quite alone, that he might con-
centrate the whole of his thoughts upon the one
problem: are we on the right road? Is our morality —
that is to say, the table of valuations which is gradually
modifying us, compatible with an ideal worthy of man's
inheritance and past? " I love men," said his second
self — Zarathustra, " I am bringing gifts unto men."*

Let us be satisfied, for the moment, to know that
Nietzsche brings us something quite new — something
great and of paramount importance which is quite new,
and let us turn to his teaching.

What was Nietzsche? Was he a philosopher? The
orthodox world of philosophy says: " He brings us no
system ! " True, in the same class with Herbert Spencer

* Z., Introductory Speech, H 2.

10

Nietzsche

we cannot classify the German Nietzsche. Nor can we
include him in a group of his fellow-countrymen with
Kant and Schopenhauer.

Seeing, however, that he not only assumes the
authority of the philosopher, but again and again, in his
works, also speaks of himself as one, it would be well
for us to understand what the term " philosopher "
means to him.

" A philosopher's mission," he says, " is to create
new values," — to give mankind new principles, new
standards. The ascertaining and classifying of " many
little common facts," is useful and meritorious work,*
but it is only the menial work which prepares the way
for the philosopher.

" It may be necessary for the education of the real
philosopher, that he himself should have once stood
upon all those steps, upon which his servant, the
scientific worker of philosophy, remains standing and
must remain standing: he himself must perhaps have
been critic, and sceptic, and dogmatist, and historian,
and poet, collector, traveller, riddle-reader, moralist,
seer and free-spirit besides. . . . But all these are only
preliminary conditions for his mission; this mission
itself is to create values "; to command and to give
laws. " Philosophers determine the ' Whither ' and the
' Wherefore ' . . . they snatch with creative hands at
the future, and everything that is or has been, serves
them as a means, as an instrument — as a hammer, "f

* G.E., p. 212.

t Ibid., pp. 151, 152.

The I M MORALIST

II

Are such philosophers to be found? Nietzsche asks.
We shall see that he was one of them.

Before proceeding, and by way of further establish-
ing our parallel, it is interesting to read how Professor
Gomperz, in his Greek Thinkers, speaks of Heraclitus'
mission. " Heraclitus," he says, " was not cast for the
role of an exact investigator, his passions were too
free, he lacked the requisite soberness and he was too
prone to seek satiety in a debauch of metaphors; but
he was admirably suited to be the herald of the new
philosophy."*

How perfectly these words express all a fair critic
might say of Nietzsche !

In trying to account for the abusive language that
has for years been levelled at his philosophy, no fact, I
suppose, brings more enlightenment with it than this
one: — Nietzsche placed himself " Beyond Good and
Evil."

To those who failed to understand even the motive
which prompted him to take up this attitude, what
course could have been more natural — more obviously
pre-determined — than to dub all his works, " danger-
ous," " immoral " in its worst modern sense, and
" seditious "; just as if he had written to release the
pent passions of savages, or to cloy the libidinous
appetites of satyrs. " The destroyer of morality I am
called by the good and the just, my tale is immoral. "f

* Vol. I. p. 75, Greek Thinkers, by Professor Th. Gomperz,
translated by Laurie Magnus,
t Z., " Of the Bite of the Adder."

12

Nietzsche

Nietzsche looked solemnly around him, and an ex-
amination of the world led him to ask us the admittedly
daring question: Is that which we have for centuries
held for good and evil, really good and evil ?

Do we understand the part these two terms have
played in our history ? Is morality, its raison d'etre and
its mode of action comprehended at all? Nietzsche
answers these questions with such originality and
depth, that at first, willing as we may be to give him a
friendly hearing, we are too shocked by the strangeness
of his language to be conscious of anything at all,
except excessive displeasure. " He will strike at the
very heart of our hearts ! " we protest indignantly. But
if we say that, he is already there — where he wants to
be ; that is to say, Beyond our Good and Evil.

To his mind, these concepts : good and evil, are but
mere means, adopted by all in order to acquire power.*
Power for what ? — Power to universalise their kind or
make it paramount: — power to enable their species,
and their species alone, to preponderate or be supreme
on earth.

" The refrain of my practical philosophy," he says,
" is, Who is to be master of the world? "f

Morality decides this point. The morality which pre-
vails bears its inventors and adherents along to victory
with it. If we wish to answer Nietzsche's question:
" Who is to be master of the world? " we must ask our-
selves, first, what type is attaining to power under the

* Z., " Of Self-overcoming."

t Vol. XII. p. 208, Nietzsche's Complete Works, published by

Naumann.

The Immoralist

13

morality which prevails in the civilised world to-
day?

Does our table of ethical principles seem to be
favouring the multiplication of a desirable type? Is a
dignified or noble species tending to prevail by means of
it, or is the case precisely the reverse ?

Nietzsche challenges us to show that our way is the
right way. He does not coerce us, he does not over-
persuade; he simply says: " I am a law only for those
who are mine, I am not a law for all.* This is my way —
where is yours? "f

" Good and evil are the same," said Heraclitus.
" Morality is just as ' immoral ' as anything else on
earth," says Nietzsche, " morality itself is a form of
immorality." J

" Verily, I say unto you : good and evil which would
be imperishable do not exist. "§

Nietzsche places himself " Beyond Good and Evil
he undertakes to give us new values ; he wishes to purge
us of the old leaven. He does not merely destroy, and
despoil us of, what we possess; he refills our emptied
hands ; he is an immoralist first ; only, however, that he
may be a moralist afterwards. And one more severe, or
with a greater antipathy to looseness and laisser- alter,
we could not hope to possess.

It may now be pertinent to ask, what the figure of
Zarathustra means in Nietzsche's opus magnum, — the

• Z. , " The Supper." f Z. , "Of the Spirit of Gravity," f 2
X Vol. XV. p. 192, Nietzsche's Complete Works.
% Z. , " Of Self-overcoming."

14

Nietzsche

book to which all his later works serve but as a com-
mentary.

Why Zarathustra? Why should this ancient law-
giver seem to Nietzsche the best suited to be his
mouthpiece? He answers thus: — "Zarathustra was
responsible for the error ' morality ' ; consequently, he
should be the first to perceive that error. Zarathustra
was more truthful than any other thinker before or
after him ; in his teaching alone, do we meet with truth-
fulness upheld as the highest virtue, moreover he was
braver than all other thinkers taken together. To speak
the truth and to aim straight, that is the first Persian
virtue. The overcoming of morality through truthful-
ness, the overcoming of the moralist by his opposite —
by me — that is what the name Zarathustra means in
my mouth."*

In order to grasp how thoroughly and conscienti-
ously he set about his task, it will be necessary to look
back for a moment to see how he contemplated the
mission he undertook. For Nietzsche preaches to us, it
is true, from a hermit's cell; but he is standing on the
shoulders of giants whose strength he has enlisted in
his cause. Goethe, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Darwin,
Herbert Spencer, are at his fingers' ends, and behind
^ , him lie the ancients in whose wisdom he is deeply
versed.

Let us hear him describe how he became what he

was : —

* Vol. II. p. 430, Das Leben Fricdrich Nietzsche's, by Elizabeth
Foerster Nietzsche.

The Immoralist

i5

" Three metamorphoses of the spirit I declare unto
you ; how the spirit becometh a camel, the camel a lion,
and the lion at last a child.

" There are many things heavy for the spirit, the
strong spirit, which is able to bear the load and in
which reverence dwelleth : its strength longeth for the
heavy — for the heaviest.

" What is heavy? asks the spirit which is able to
bear the load, and, dropping like a camel on its knees,
wisheth to be well laden."

And then he describes how the spirit is laden with
the wisdom of minds that have preceded it; how it
takes up all the knowledge of the past and, under this
weight, rises to depart on a voyage of discovery in the
wilderness.

" But in the loneliest wilderness," Nietzsche con-
tinues, " cometh the second metamorphosis: there
the spirit becometh a lion. Freedom it will take as its
prey and be lord in its own wilderness.

" There it seeketh its last lord; to him and its last
God, it seeketh to be a foe " . . .

But in its way standeth the dragon " Thou
shalt."

" Values a thousand years old are shining on its
scales, and thus saith the mightiest of all dragons:
' The value of all things is shining on me.'

" My brethren, why is there need of the lion in the
spirit? What can the lion do, that the camel — the
beast of burden — cannot ?

" Create new values — that even the lion is not able

i6

Nietzsche

to do, but create freedom for itself for fresh creations,
that the lion can do.

" To create freedom for one's self — and a holy Nay
even towards duty; for this, my brethren, there is need
of the lion.

" As its holiest, the spirit once loved ' Thou shalt,'
now it must find illusion and arbitrariness even in the
holiest, in order to capture for itself freedom from its
love. The lion is needed for this capture.

" But say, my brethren, what can the child do which
even the lion could not? Why hath the preying lion
still to become a child ?

" The child is innocence and oblivion, a new begin-
ning, a game, a wheel rolling by itself, a prime motor, a
sacred pronouncing of yea to life.

" Ay, for the game of creating, my brethren, a
sacred pronouncing of yea is necessary; it is its own
will the spirit now willeth, it is his own world the out-
cast wisheth for himself.

" Three metamorphoses of the mind I declared unto
you ; how the mind became a camel, the camel a lion,
and the lion at last a child.

" Thus Spake Zarathustra"*

Thus, before Nietzsche could give us new values, he
had to attain to his second ingenuousness — to the art-
lessness of a child ; to do that he must have the freedom
of a lion, and, before his mind could gain the freedom of
the lion, like a beast of burden, it had first to bear the
wisdom of the past.

* Z., " Of the Three Metamorphoses."

The Im moralist

*7

In an early work, The Dawn of Day, he tells us some-
thing concerning this wisdom which he acquired, and
why humanity seeks wisdom at all.

" Fear," he tells us, " has promoted our general
knowledge of mankind more than love ; for fear tries to
ascertain who the other is, what he knows, what he
wants, — it were dangerous and detrimental to deceive
one's self on this head."* In order to guard against
the danger of lightning, we must know its nature ; if we
wish to meet a foe with the hope of overcoming him,
we must know his resources. Wisdom, like morality,
therefore, is a means to power, it strengthens the species.

Another passage in the same book draws an inevit-
able conclusion from this idea: "Even the sense of
truth, which is really the sense for security, man has in
common with the animals : we will not allow ourselves
to be deceived — we will not allow ourselves to be mis-
guided by ourselves; we listen with suspicion to the
whisperings of our passions ; we control ourselves and
are on the qui-vive against ourselves; all these things
the animal understands as thoroughly as men under-
stand them; in the animal also, self-control develops
out of a desire for the real — for the unmistakable, "f

Our hatred of falsehood, therefore, is but the out-
come of our loathing of insecurity and its concomitant
dangers. We will know everything, that we may be
armed against everything. Truth therefore, or our
notion of it, like wisdom and morality, is a weapon of
power, it makes us and our kind more formidable.
* D.D., p. 260. f Ibid., p. 22.

B

i8

Nietzsche

Now, it is with this fearful eagerness for the truth
that Nietzsche asks us: " Where is your way? Who is
going to be master on earth? " It is out of a feeling of
fear — fear of the future — that he tells us: "No one
knoweth yet what is good and what is evil."*

We are all travelling blindly towards a point which
we do not know. The colours we fly, the standards of
morality we sail under, were followed by a people
who wished to attain to power. But these standards
mean nothing to us now. We are so used to them, and
their colours have got so blurred through wear and
tear, that we do not even know out of which port we
originally sailed.

" Lo," says Zarathustra, apostrophising the sun at
the very beginning of his teaching, " I am weary of my
wisdom, like the bee that hath gathered too much
honey, I need hands outstretched to take it.

" I would fain give away and distribute.

" To that end, must I descend into the deep, as
thou dost in the evening, when sinking behind the sea,
thou takest light to the nether world, thou glorious
star!

" Like thee, I must go down, as men say, to whom I
am about to descend.

" Then bless me, thou tranquil eye, that canst
behold the greatest happiness without envy.

" Lo, this cup is about to be empty again, and Zara-
thustra will once more become a man.

" Thus began Zarathustra's descent. "f

* Z.,"Of01dandNewTables,"1F2. fZ., Intro. Speech, H 2.

The I M MORALIST

19

Like Heraclitus, Nietzsche is a poet as well as a phil-
osopher, and, in these opening lines of Thus Spake
Zaralhustra, he will convey to us in what mood, with
what depth of conviction, he began his teaching.

Looking back for a moment, that we may be in a
position, fully to realise the magnitude, and great im-
portance to us, of Nietzsche's achievement, let us recall,
roughly, what has taken place in European thought
since the birth of Christ.

We know now what the culture of the ancient
Greeks was. We have learned to admire its character of
extraordinary intellectual freedom, the like of which
our continent was not to see again for centuries, and we
know through what chapter of foolish accidents, it was
buried — completely buried alive — by a more youthful
and perhaps more implacable rival — the culture of
Christianity.

We have but to listen to Tacitus, in order to learn
what it meant to the ancient world of thought, to see
itself being ousted by the incoming philosophy. Pagan-
ism, however, fell, and Christianity rose in its stead.

The period of the Apostolic Fathers, during which
Christianity was preached far and wide, was followed
by that of a school of philosophy known by the name of
" Patristic," to whose labours the establishment of the
new faith upon a solid basis in the heart of the old
culture is mainly due. The men whose work constituted
this Patristic philosophy were chiefly engaged either in
opposing paganism and the philosophy of the Greeks,

20

Nietzsche

or in rendering the latter harmless, in so far as opposi-
tion was concerned, by incorporating it in the teaching
of the militant church.

Scholasticism followed, and philosophy was pursued
in a still greater degree under the authority of theology.
Its object being the enunciation of Christian dogma in
its union with dialectics and reason.

Thomas Aquinas practically put the coping-stone on
the Scholastic edifice.

Any further development of it could only lead to its
transformation. Once reason and faith had each been
allotted its precise role, and sphere of action, and reason
had been enlisted in the cause of faith, to support and
consolidate it, wherever it could do so; the aim of the
schoolmen had practically been achieved, and their
system of thought began to be superseded.

The other causes which occasioned its break-up, were
the revival of learning and the re-awakening of the
scientific spirit in man, which, resulting as it did in a
deeper knowledge of mathematics and physics, ulti-
mately altered the whole of man's attitude towards
nature.

From the beginning of the fourteenth century, dates
the gradual downfall of Scholasticism and the prepar-
ing of the ground for the Renaissance and the revival of
learning, i.e. a revival, on a larger scale, of all the lofty
and independent sentiments in which the people of
antiquity had rejoiced, and which had lent their
classical period its peculiarly practical character.

The germs of the Renaissance may, of course, be

The I m moralist

21

traced to a date much earlier than the one given; we
see them already in the rationalism of the Averroists,
in the cells of Gerbert and Roger Bacon, and in
humanism.

But not until Petrarch, in the first half of the four-
teenth century, introduced the new learning can the
wonderful movement be said to have been really under
way. With Petrarch, free thought was awakened, curi-
osity was encouraged, and liberty of action and con-
science seemed to be established.

He dared to storm the strongholds of scholastic
thought; he attacked the Church of Rome; working
with his friend Boccaccio at the publication of MSS. he
was practically the inaugurator of the Renaissance in
Italy, and he never ceased, during the whole of his life-
time, to encourage and promote that interest in classic
literature which he had done so much to awaken. The
example he set was soon followed. Italy became a
centre of learning and, as we know, in course of time,
the languages of Greece and Rome were so completely
acquired, that scholars once again handled both tongues
in verse and prose. It is interesting for our purpose to
note, that even the Church lent its influence to the
classical revival. Popes Nicholas V. and Leo X. are
examples of this.

At the close of the fifteenth century, the knowledge
of Greece and Rome had been almost reappropriated,
the dulness and obscurity of mediaeval modes of think-
ing were scorned and superseded — the humanistic
movement had actually triumphed.

22

Nietzsche

The progress of the revival was amazing ; with almost
incredible speed, it passed northward from Italy to
Germany, then on to the Netherlands, Spain, France
and England ; awakening geniuses wherever it made its
influence felt, and sweeping away the intellectual cob-
webs of centuries.

It is no part of our purpose to decide how far it led
to the Reformation in Germany; let us rather hear
Nietzsche's own words concerning this stage of
European history.

" The Germans have caused Europe the loss of the
last great harvest of civilisation that was to be garnered
for Europe — the Renaissance. Do we understand — do
we wish to understand what the Renaissance was ? The
transvaluation of Christian values, the attempt, under-
taken with all means, with all instincts, with all genius,
to bring about the triumph of the opposite values, the
noble values. There has been no greater war, there has
been no more decisive question than the Renaissance,
— my question is the question put by the Renaissance :
neither has there ever been a form of attack more
fundamental, more direct, more strenuously delivered
with a whole front upon the centre of the enemy ! To
attack at the most decisive place, at the seat of Christi-
anity itself, and here to set the noble values upon the
throne, i.e. to introduce them into the most radical
longings of those sitting there. ... I see before me a
possibility of a perfectly supernatural enchantment and
colour charm: it seems to me to gleam forth in all
tremors of refined beauty, that there is an art at work

The Immoralist

23

in it, so divine, so devilishly divine, that one might
seek for millenniums in vain for a second example of
such a possibility; I see a spectacle so ingenious, so
wonderfully paradoxical at the same time, that all
Divinities of Olympus would have had an occasion for

an immortal laughter — Caesar Borgia as Pope Am I

understood? Well, that would have been the triumph
for which I alone am longing at present — Christianity
would thereby have been done away with ! What hap-
pened? A German monk, Luther, came to Rome. This
monk with all the vindictive instincts of an abortive
priest in his nature, became furious against the Re-
naissance in Rome. Instead of, with the profoundest
gratitude, understanding the prodigy that had taken
place, i.e. the overcoming of Christianity at its seat, —
his hatred knew only how to draw its nourishment
from this spectacle. A religious person thinks only of
himself. Luther saw the depravity of Popery, while the
very reverse was palpable: the old depravity, the
peccatum originate, Christianity, no longer sat on the
throne of the Pope ! But life ! The triumph of life ! The
great yea to all things high, beautiful and daring ! And
Luther restored the Church once more : he attacked it.
. . . The Renaissance became an event without meaning
— a great in-vain ! Ah those Germans, what have they
already cost us ! In-vain — that has ever been the work
of the Germans. — The Reformation; Leibnitz; Kant
and so-called German philosophy ; the wars of ' Libera-
tion ' ; the Empire — every time an in-vain for something
that had already existed, for something irrevocable,

24

Nietzsche

" . . . They are my enemies, I confess it, these Germans :
In despising them I despise every kind of uncleanliness
in concepts and valuations, every kind of cowardice in
presence of every straightforward ay and nay. They
have tangled and confused for a thousand years almost,
whatever they laid their fingers on, they have on their
conscience all the half-measures, all the three-eighth
measures from which Europe is sick, — they have also
on their conscience the foulest kind of Christianity, the
most incurable, the most irrefutable that exists, —
Protestantism. If we do not see an end to Christianity,
the Germans will be to blame for it."*

The harvest of this movement, to which, as we see,
Nietzsche grants so much importance, was to be reaped
everywhere in the western countries of Europe, and
even though some of the greater men came but a
century later, the seeds of their wisdom can, without a
doubt, be traced to the Renaissance. In this respect we
have but to think of Bacon of Verulam, Galileo,
Thomas Hobbes, Descartes, Spinoza, John Locke, etc.
etc.

In this rapid survey of the progress of Europe's mind
we have seen, that from the birth of Christ to the Re-
naissance, almost all the best available intellect was for
centuries engrossed in the one theme — the proving of
Christianity to the pagans and the attempt to reconcile
Christian doctrine with reason. This was the work of
the later, Patristic philosophy and of Scholasticism.
Then, suddenly, as if illumined by a propitious flash of
* g.W., pp. 350, 352.

The Immoralist

25

understanding, the mind of Europe seemed to grow
clearer; men appeared who were bent on breathing
freer, fresher air. More liberty for brain and lungs,
greater scope for thought and action, a keener asking
of why and how, — these were the ideals of the men
whose struggles gave Europe the Renaissance.

Humanism woke, stretched itself, and breathed its
quickening principles into the spirit of mediaeval Italy.
It then seemed nonsense to continue proving what was
generally regarded as an accepted truth ; because that
Christian metaphysics was then regarded as an almost
unassailable certainty, scarcely need be mentioned.
What was needed was research — research which would
lead to a broadening of the basis of knowledge.

Curiously enough, no one attempted yet to question
Christian Dogma. It was still believed that God was a
power outside the world he had created ; that the world
continued its existence under his supervision, and that
he could, at will, interfere with its existence. Gradually,
however, the first mediaeval scientists began to observe
that things do not occur singly, that there is harmony
in the phenomena of the universe. They began to see
law and order in what had theretofore seemed chaos,
and effects began to be traced to causes. A new notion
of God was necessary to fit in with this new aspect of
things, and a God was pictured, not outside the world,
but in it.

God and the world stood or fell together; — the one
was a manifestation of the other. This was Pantheism.
Bruno, and later Spinoza (in opposition to Descartes,)

26

Nietzsche

elaborated this view. Leibnitz, who wished to evade
both of these men, followed with his Monadology. It is
neither convenient nor necessary to describe this theory
in detail ; let it therefore suffice to say that it was the
last attempt, on a large scale, philosophically to uphold
Christian metaphysics.

While, however, Descartes, Spinoza and Leibnitz
were engaged upon metaphysical research, while they
were speculating as to the beginning and end of things,
our philosophers, Bacon, Hobbes and Locke, more
prosaic than idealistic, more calculating than specula-
tive— in fact more English than continental — were
breaking the road to what is now called Empiricism,
the philosophy based on experience, experiment, induc-
tion. The philosophy which was to influence Voltaire,
Condillac, and many other French and German writers,
and which was ultimately to make Nietzsche exclaim : —

" European ignobleness, the plebeianism of modern
ideas, is England's work and invention."*

All these men, however, Descartes, Spinoza, Leib-
nitz, Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, and later Hume, although
prosecuting the search after truth in two totally
different directions, aimed no decisive blow at Christian
metaphysics, and this despite the fact that Hobbes'
views favoured atheism and that Hume was openly
anti-theological. The definite step in this direction was
left to Kant, who, incited chiefly by Hume's scepticism,
constructed his Critical Philosophy.

Although Kant's chief merit as a philosopher lies in
* G.E., p. 213.

The I m moralist

27

his examination of the worth of our knowledge and the
value of our means of acquiring it, the agnostic element
in his later works gave a turn to modern thought, which
was so new, and freed the human intellect so success-
fully from all theological bias, that, in the light of
recent philosophical speculation, it might well be given
a more important position.

" Kant terms every philosophy which transcends the
sphere of experience without having previously justi-
fied this act by an examination of the faculty of know-
ledge, a form of ' Dogmatism.' He says it is impossible
to prove that there is a God. All proofs hitherto ad-
duced are false. The attitude assumed towards religion
by Thomas Huxley and Herbert Spencer was thus fore-
shadowed by Kant, who, as we know, in the end, dealt a
heavy blow at Christian metaphysics. In his heart of
hearts, though, he believed in God and the immortality
of the soul and it is of importance to us to observe, that
Christian morality had a sacredness for him which
made him quite irrational. His reason partly gets the
better of his heart, however, in his writings; and,
although he never casts any doubt upon Christian
morality, he destroys the highest hopes and the cruellest
fears of the Christian religion. Like Spencer, Kant had
no special argument against Christianity, he simply
urged that all metaphysics are pointless — impossible ! "

Freedom of thought was now secured. Kant had
swept away old systems of philosophy as untenable;
now, among his countrymen, appeared creators of new
metaphysics. Hegel came with his system of Absolute

28

Nietzsche

Idealism. Philosophy to him is the science of the ab-
solute. He bases his philosophy upon mankind — upon
history. Schopenhauer followed with a doctrine which
may be described as " a transitional form from the
idealism of Kant to the prevalent realism of the present
day." He supersedes Hegel in reputation and in the
number of his adherents.

Inasmuch as I shall be able to discuss his view of life
only in my next lecture, let it suffice to record here that
he left Christian morality practically unaffected. This
point is important, more particularly as morality was a
subject to which he paid considerable attention.

With Schopenhauer's philosophy, Christian meta-
physics may perhaps be said to have received its coup
de grace. Nevertheless, just as in the Middle Ages
Christian metaphysics had not been treated as a prob-
lem but as an already accomplished fact which needed
but the support of reason, — just as, immediately previ-
ous to Kant, philosophers had begun energetically to
criticise Christian metaphysics, although always hoping
to hold by it, so now (that is to say in the first half of
the nineteenth century) Christian morality had not yet
become a problem.

Is it distinctly understood what the term " Christian
morality " covers? Some of us may protest that we are
not Christians. The term Christian morality, in Nietz-
sche's philosophy, means that morality which reigns as
an ideal of conduct in the most civilised parts of the
world at the present day. It is the moral philosophy we
inherit and try to make our own without a question,

The Immoralist

29

despite the fact that we may be agnostics, or atheists,
or completely indifferent to any form of belief or dis-
belief.

Now this morality, with its values " good " and
" evil," has often enough been called upon to answer
for itself. Doubting the likelihood of its having had a
divine origin, moralists have not refrained from assign-
ing to it other sources more or less plausible. And the
labour expended in doing this has been enormous. Pre-
cisely what happened to Christian metaphysics also
happened to Christian morality. The question was:
could it be made compatible with reason? Could
sceptics who had parted with the old Faith, still, by
means of reason, be made to abide by Christian
morality ?

Blindly seizing upon the Christian notions of good
and evil, as foregone conclusions, these men, many of
whom, remember, were the most rampant unbelievers,
consumed all their energy in trying to establish upon
rational and scientific principles the moral values
current in a creed which they had rejected!

The authority for the old morality was sought by
some in a " moral sense," by others in the feelings of
pleasure and displeasure, by yet others in law, or in
expediency and non-expediency, and by one in a
Categorical Imperative.

No one, however, seemed to halt at the terms
" good " and " evil " themselves, in order to ask him-
self: what these words meant: "seen through the
glasses of life! "

30

Nietzsche

It will be seen that the step taken by these moral-
philosophers was only the first of a long series of steps,
which led to a much more pressing and fundamental
question. This question was, are the concepts of good
and evil which reign at the present day to be adhered to
at all ? Whatever their respective sources or authorities
may be, is not the relation of good and evil to human
life still a debatable point? — or are the existing valua-
tions understood in spite of the fact that they have
been reft of their superterres trial warrant?

All the philosophers since the Renaissance had left
the morality of the old religion practically where it was ;
nay, many as we have seen, had sought to fix it where it
was with reason ; that is to say, had tried to rebuild it
upon science, in the hope of making it more compatible
with the views of a world that was inclining ever more
and more confidently towards a scientific grasp of
things in general.

As Nietzsche observes, in every discourse upon
morals that had appeared before his time, the problem
of morality itself had been lacking, the suspicion that
morality was something problematic, at all, appeared
to be entirely absent.*

To put it in Lecky's words, philosophers had been
satisfied to hold that: " The business of a moral phil-
osophy is to account for and justify our moral senti-
ments, or, in other words, to show how we came to have
our notions of duty, and to supply us with a reason for

* G.E., p. 104.

The Immoralist

3i

acting upon them."* In short, taking our concepts
" good " and " evil " for granted, the question which
always occupied them was, how could these best be
justified, or made compatible with reason.

• ••••••

We are now prepared to understand how it was, that
the world suddenly stood aghast, when a man appeared,
who towered as completely above these moral compro-
misers and cutters of misfits, as Kant had towered above
the metaphysicians who preceded him.

We can almost sympathise with the " start " Europe
must have been given when, above the muddled mur-
murs over morality, a roaring voice suddenly announ-
ced, amid a veritable hail of epigrams: "No one
knoweth yet what is good and evil! "

" No one knoweth? Why, a moment ago we all
knew! " This was the cry of the Europe that was
baffled and startled, — of the Europe that was convinced
that Nietzsche must be raving mad !

What is the net result of your giving " a basis to
morality? " Nietzsche asked of the moralists at his
back. It is simply this, that we have the learned expres-
sion of your good faith in that morality which happens
to be prevalent in your quarter of the globe at the
present day. I But I tell you, speaking in your own
language, that " life itself is something essentially
immoral! "J

* History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne.
t G.E., p. 104.

+ Birth of Tragedy (German Edition), p. 10.

32

Nietzsche

" Life is appropriation, injury, conquest of the
strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion of
its own forms, incorporation, and at least, putting it
mildest, exploitation."*

We know it is all this; but at the present day we
should like to believe that it is not so. We know it is all
this : but we prefer to blind ourselves to the real facts,
and to say with Spencer simply: " Life is activity! "f

Activity may mean anything, harmless or harmful.
We must therefore define our word. What do the evo-
lutionists say? The activity they speak of is the
" struggle for life."

Nietzsche says this definition is inadequate. He warns
us not to confound Mai thus with nature. { There is some-
thing more than a struggle for life, between the organic
beings of this earth ;§ want which is supposed to bring
this struggle about, is not so common as is supposed;
some other force must be operative. Is there no aggres-
sion without the struggle for existence? Nietzsche
answers in the affirmative, and his reason is, that life is
not " activity " striving after survival alone, but after
power. Not Schopenhauer's will to live, but Will to
Power is the motive force behind all living phenomena;
the instinct of " self-preservation is only one of the in-
direct and most frequent results thereof." || Every

* G.E., p. 226.

f Principles of Biology, Vol. I. p. 113. Principles oj Ethics,
Vol. I. p. 485.
X C.W.,p. 177.

§ On this point see some interesting remarks by W. H. Rolph,
pp. 94, 95 of his Biologische Probleme. (Edit. 1884.)
|| G.E.,p. 20.

The Immoralist

33

species of organic being behaves as if its kind alone
should ultimately become paramount upon earth, and
whether it attempt to achieve this end by open aggres-
sion or cowardly dissimulation, the motive in both
cases is the same.

Moreover there are many things valued higher than
life itself by living beings;* the Will to Live, therefore,
often finds itself opposed to a still higher Will. What,
then, is this mightier force to which the will to live
sometimes has to submit ? We have heard what Nietz-
sche calls it — it is the Will to Power.

Nietzsche now goes to the root of the matter, by ap-
plying this doctrine to man, and the morality of man.
He says, before we justify or account for our modern
European morality, are we certain that the values
" good " and " evil " which it gives us are to be upheld
or retained at all ? Are we clear as to what they mean ?

But, above all, are we clear as to what morality
means? How does it appear " seen through the glasses
of life? "

If we turn to Nature, we find every species of organic
being instinctively adopting and practising those acts
which most conduce to the prevalence or supremacy
of its kind. If it fail to discover that conduct which will
bear its kind to power, either by aggression or by dis-
simulation, then, the chances are, that it will be exter-
minated : those animals are already doomed to become
extinct that cannot select that order of conduct which
is best calculated to make them overcome, either

* Z., "Of Self-overcoming."

34

Nietzsche

numerically, strategically, or by sheer physical strength,
the will to power of other species. But, once that order
of conduct is found, proved efficient and established, it
becomes the ruling morality of the species that adopts
it, and bears them along to victory with it. That is all
perfectly clear.

The animal world, therefore, is the scene of an unin-
terrupted war — the war of modes of conduct. If a de-
vouring species ever adopted the system of valuing,
current among the species devoured, it would thereby
achieve its own extinction, and vice versa. The lion's
" good " is what is good for him. It may be the ante-
lope's notion of " evil," in fact it generally is, and if
the antelope's notion of " good " were ever adopted by
lions, these would have to cease their slaughter among
the antelopes.

With the help of the evidence afforded by biology,
Nietzsche therefore inquires whether it is sufficiently
recognised that concepts of good and evil are originally
only a means to an end, that they are only the expedi-
ent of a species to acquire power — power to become
paramount?

The fact that the war of conducts which now especi-
ally concerns us, is a war carried on among men, does
not in the least alter the first principles of the question.
Wherever we find " good " or " evil " used to designate
one or another mode of conduct, we may be sure that
one particular species of man is there attempting to
ensure his supremacy under the cover of these values.

So far, therefore, Nietzsche merely takes up the

The Immoralist

35

position of the relativist with regard to morality. Good
and evil, he says, are relative values. They are a
question of point of view. Absolute good and absolute
evil are myths.

u Many lands were seen by Zarathustra, and many
peoples : thus he discovered the good and evil of many
peoples. No greater power on earth was found by Zara-
thustra than good and evil.

" No people could live that did not in the first place
value; if it would maintain itself, however, it must not
value as its neighbour doth.

" Much that one people called good, was regarded
with scorn and contempt by another: thus I found it.
Much I found named evil here, and there decked with
purple honours.

" A table of values hangeth over each people. Lo! It
is the table of their triumphs, behold it is the voice of
their will unto power.

" Whatever enableth a people to dominate and con-
quer and shine to the horror and envy of its neighbour,
that is regarded as the high, the first, the standard, the
significance of all things.

" Verily men have made for themselves all their good
and evil. Verily, they did not take it, they did not find
it, it did not come down as a voice from heaven.

" Values were only assigned unto things by man in
order to maintain himself — he it was who gave signifi-
cance to things, a human significance. Therefore he
calleth himself man, i.e. the valuing one."*

* Z., " Of a Thousand and One Goals."

36 Nietzsche

Every moral principle which Nietzsche saw exercis-
ing power in this world, he attributed to the will of
some species of being, which therewith desired to attain
to ascendency over his fellow beings.

From the ichneumon fly, which has to regard as
" good " the laying of its eggs inside the skin of an un-
suspecting caterpillar which is afterwards devoured
alive by the hatched brood, to the action of the canni-
bal who thinks he must eat his enemy that he may ac-
quire something of the latter's prowess and ferocity,
the basis of every action to be witnessed on this earth
seemed to Nietzsche the instinct of self-universalisation
or self-enhancement, led by the thirst for power.

This doctrine was a revelation. All the difficulties at-
tendant on the absolute view of good and evil, seemed to
vanish in the light of Nietzsche's discovery. We could
now group together the thousand and one different con-
cepts of " good " distributed over the man-inhabited
parts of the world, and understand their origin at a
glance; indeed, with Nietzsche's view of the meaning of
good and evil before us, we should even have felt some
surprise at finding but one notion of good ruling every-
where. Nations, like species of animals, must value
differently, otherwise they cannot resist each other.

Reasonable as this aspect of morality may appear to
us now, however, we can readily understand why (when
it was first put before the world, that is to say, at a
time when people had scarcely digested Darwin),
it seemed to all but a few, little short of dangerous
madness.

The Immoralist

37

The Christian notions of good and evil,* having
grown, so to speak, into the modern, civilised man's
blood, he had come to regard them even as the moral
philosophers had done, that is to say, as facts which
needed but to be accounted for ; and, although the evi-
dence that other moralities flourished and protected
people elsewhere, proved rather a " stumper M to him;
still he believed that his particular notion of good
would ultimately become universal and thus clear up
the vexed question, f

A conclusion so profound as that of Nietzsche's was,
of course, not the work of a day or of a year of days.
Indeed it might be looked upon as the result of his life's
study. He tells us that as early as his thirteenth year
the origin of evil haunted him. " A little historical and
philological schooling," he continues, " together with
an inborn and delicate sense regarding psychological
questions, changed my problem in a very short time
into that other one: under what circumstances and con-
ditions did man invent the evaluations good and evil ?
And what is their own specific value? "J

It was only in the summer of 1864, however, when he
was in his twentieth year, that he began to approach a
solution of the difficulty, and in the following manner : —
He was expected to do some work during his holidays,

* See pp. 28, 29 of this paper.

t For a remarkable confirmation of this statement see Sidgwick's
The Methods of Ethics, p. 14. Here, although not speaking as a
Christian, Sidgwick actually expresses the hope that all " methods "
may ultimately coincide.

:g.m.,p. 4.

38

Nietzsche

and it was to consist of a Latin thesis upon some
optional subject. He chose Theognis, and, it was while
studying the latter's works, that he was struck with the
author's use of the words " good " and " bad " as syn-
onyms of aristocratic and plebeian.*

This was the first hint that put him on the right track.
With it he grew more than ever convinced that there
could be no absolute or universal Good and Bad; that
different modes of valuing conduct must be just as in-
stinctively adopted and adhered to by different classes
of men as they are adopted and adhered to by different
classes of beasts, and when Theognis, in the sixth
century B.C. spoke of the democrats as " bad," and of
his party as " good," at a time when the fall of Thea-
genes, tyrant of Megara, had brought about a struggle
between the oligarchy and the democracy, the fact
that was plainly to be read from the particular use of
these two words, was, in Nietzsche's opinion, that
Theognis and his party, wishing to maintain their
power, had to regard any force which threatened to
thwart that very natural desire as bad, — " bad " in
the sense of " unfriendly to their particular mode of
power."

From that time forward, Nietzsche began to regard
our modern values " good " and " evil " with ever-in-
creasing suspicion, and literally did not rest until he
had formulated the theory expounded in his latter
works.

Of course we had had moralists, or preferably im-

* Deussen, Erinnenmgen an Friedrick Nietzsche, p. II.

The I m moralist

39

moralists, who, without offering a substitute, had at-
tacked the Christian values. French books had been
plentiful, and Stirner in modern times had presented us
with a strikingly original and very deep work on the
subject.* But the only favourable comment we find
concerning any modern school of ethics, in Nietzsche's
works, relates to Herbert Spencer. The position Spencer
assumes, although not sanctioned by Nietzsche, is
nevertheless declared to be "psychologically tenable."f

With the metaphysics of Christianity in ruins behind
him, it will be seen that Nietzsche took a step as bold
and stupendous as Kant's, and as necessary; but
against that remnant of Christianity which his great
predecessor and the orthodox world perhaps cherished
as even more sacred than the metaphysics.

Nietzsche attacked Christian morals. He declared
them to be, like all other morals, merely an expedient
for lending power to, or universalising, a certain type of
man. His courage was unprecedented, his wickedness,
of course — terrible !

Conceiving all moralities to be but codes adopted by
various peoples in order to perpetuate their kind or
make it alone paramount, we have seen that he had to
face the disconcerting corollary that all kinds of men,
like all kinds of animals, must at some time or other
have taken to moralising. Conflicting moral codes were,
therefore, nothing but the conflicting weapons of differ-
ent species of men. Thus, the important question to be
answered was, not so much, what class of man now be-

* Det Einzige und sein Eigentum. f G. M., p. 20.

40

Nietzsche

lieves in such and such a moral principle and tries to
act upon it? but in what class of mind must it have
originated? — for then it would be made clear what type
would ultimately owe its preservation to it.

What sort of morality shall we now allow to rule?
The solution of that problem will determine who, ulti-
mately, will be master on earth !

We know that Christianity has come forward for two
thousand years with its solution of the problem. Let us
pause to ask ourselves, says Nietzsche, who is tending
to attain to power under it ?

We can understand now, how it was he said: " Good
and evil themselves are but intershadows and damp
afflictions and wandering clouds."*

And we can follow him when he exclaims : — " When
I came unto men, I found them sitting on an old con-
ceit. All of them thought they had known long what
was good and evil unto man.

" All speech about virtue appeared unto them an old
weary thing, and he who wished to sleep well, still spoke
of ' good ' and ' evil ' before going to bed.

" This sleeping I disturbed when teaching that no
one knoweth yet what is good and evil! "f

I warned you that it was time we began reading and
learning Nietzsche in England. I think you will now be
willing to grant, that the importance of his philosophy
warranted my words of warning. With the religious
sanction destroyed, and moral valuations shown to be
but the self-enhancing expedients of a species, morality

* Z., " Before Sunrise." t Z., " Of Old and New Tables," IF 2.

The Immoralist

4i

derives this enormous advantage, namely: it is freed
from all taint of morality! — virtue or vice in the old
sense. It becomes an adjustable instrument in the hand
of the moralist wherewith he can rear a species — a
world-conquering species, provided the code he writes
be calculated to make such a type thrive.

" With your values and words of good and evil, ye
exercise power, ye valuing ones."*

" No greater power on earth was found by Zara-
thustra than good and evil."f

These values are things to be juggled with for our
highest ideals. Not what the past has cherished and
revered as good and evil is the question; but what
notions of good and evil are we going to allow to per-
sist?

That good and evil, we are now at liberty to choose,
we have now a perfect right to determine. The yoke of
tradition has been lifted from our necks. Too long had
we ascribed to the inventiveness of an all too officious
divinity, the laws which are purely human in origin.
Nietzsche and Herbert Spencer are here in perfect
agreement, as are also most modern ethicists outside
the church and chapel.

" Who is to be master of tne world? " This is of un-
paralleled importance ; this is moreover a question be-
set with considerable difficulties; — for, like all really
important questions, it is solely and purely a matter of
taste.

Morality is ultimately, and through and through, a

* Z. , * « Of Self-overcoming." t Z. , " Of a Thousand and One Goals. "

42

Nietzsche

matter of taste. With our choice of moral valuations,
we betray our choice in regard to man ; we divulge our
taste in regard to what species of man we would see
attain to power.

Nietzsche knew perfectly well, that to break all
tables of good and evil, and then to construct a new
table compatible with his ideal of man, meant abandon-
ing his position as a relativist ; hence his emphatic ac-
knowledgment of the fact that there are other ways
than his,* hence, too, his definite utterance concerning
his attitude towards morality in these words : f —

" No good, no bad, but my taste, for which I have
neither shame nor concealment." J

The first problem that faces us, however, on the new
road, is this: — We are in a world already possessed of
moral values, are these existing values to be wholly dis-
carded? How can we select from among the values of
the past, those we still hold to be compatible with our
ideal, — compatible with the man whose kind we would
see paramount?

Nietzsche gives us the clue; but along with it, curi-
ously enough, comes that part of his moral philosophy
which accounts for probably three-quarters of his
bitterest enemies.

He says § he has investigated the finer and coarser
moralities which have hitherto prevailed or still prevail
on earth, and in them all has found certain traits recur-

* Z., "The Spirit of Gravity," IT 2.

f On this point see Dr A. Tille's Von Darwin bis Nietzsche,
p- 238.

X Z.t " The Spirit of Gravity," IF 2. § G. E., p. 227 et seq.

The I m moralist

43

ring so regularly together, that, at last, he was obliged
to recognise two fundamental types — two distinct
classes of morality which appear to be in a state of per-
petual conflict on earth. In mankind, there is a con-
tinual war between the powerful, the noble, the strong
and the well-constituted on the one side, and the im-
potent, the mean, the weak, and the ill-constituted on
the other. The war is a war of values ; occasionally, as
history shows, it becomes a war of grapeshot and guillo-
tines— a war to the knife ; but the values that are fought
for are always the values of a master-morality on the
one hand and of a slave-morality on the other.

Nietzsche recognises a fact that is mostly overlooked
by those who declare the self-preservative instinct to
be the prime motor of organic life.

" A living thing seeks above all to discharge its
strength,"* he says.

The natural function of the strong, of the exuberant,
is to discharge their strength and to spend their energy.
" To demand of strength that it should not manifest
itself as strength, that it should not be a will to over-
power, to subdue, to become master of, that it should
not be a thirst for enemies, resistance, and triumphs, is
just as absurd as to demand of weakness that it should
manifest itself as strength." f

The strong will and must discharge their strength,
and in doing so, the havoc they may make of other
beings in their environment is purely incidental. There
is a superfluity of energy in them, an excess, which is
* G.E., p. 20. t G.M., p. 44.

44 Nietzsche

neither claimed nor availed of, by any circumstance in
their lives. This superfluity, this excess, is the pressure
in them which accounts for their acts of destruction for
destruction's sake; it is the motive force which explains
their will to overpower, to create or destroy above their
immediate needs, to create at all, and to sing, shout,
spring, play, romp, kill, oppress, and seek danger. These
natural functions of the strong, the hale and the hearty,
like all natural functions, were perforce regarded as
" good " by those who possessed them. Valuing as all
must value, who wish to maintain their power, these
strong ones, the natural masters of any community in
which the qualities they possessed meant self-aggran-
disement, declared that to be good which was their good;
bad, to them, meant all that which was unlike them, —
the despicable, the weak and the ill-constituted.

But, curiously enough, there is one trait common to
both masters and slaves, which is, that both, somehow,
desireto make their species paramount, and, if possible,
to attain to supremacy. What, then, could be more self-
evident, more pre-determinated, than that the natural
slaves, that is to say: the mean, the weak, and the ill-
constituted, should also moralise ? They must also have
a concept of " good," and that concept must likewise
be a self-enhancing concept ; it must be their good, and
everything that thwarts it must be their evil. Do we
find the weak and the ill-constituted moralising thus?
Nietzsche craves attention; he says they do.

He illustrates his meaning by declaring the master-
morality to be that which, standing above, looks down-

The Immoralist

45

wards, thus obtaining its own peculiar perspective; and
the slave-morality to be that which, standing below
looks upwards, thereby obtaining a perspective quite
its own.*

In the first, the master-morality, it is the eagle which,
looking down from a ledge of rock upon a browsing
lamb, contends that " eating lamb is good." In the
second, the slave-morality, it is the lamb which, look-
ing up from the sward and espying the eagle, bleats
dissentingly : " eating lamb is evil."

We know that these two classes exist everywhere on
earth. Mankind, irrespective of racial distinctions, does
fall into the two broad classes already described. We
are moreover compelled to admit that both classes
moralise, are forced to moralise, in order to meet that
ever-pressing desire to acquire power for their species ;
but, when we have acknowledged this we have done all
that Nietzsche wishes of us; for it is the key to the
whole question of morals to-day; it is the clue to the
answer of Nietzsche's haunting question: " Who is to
be master of the world? "

Of course, as we are told in Beyond Good and Evil, in
all higher and mixed civilisations, attempts have now
been made to reconcile the two moralities ; at present,
they are seldom found juxtaposed in sharp contrast.
They are more often found confused and mingled in one
community, in one man ; yea, often in one soul.

But, that we may trace, and know how to distinguish,
them, when we meet with them, we have only to think
* G.E., pp. 43, 44, 241.

1

46

Nietzsche

of what probably took place when the ruling caste and
the ruled class took to moralising.

Taking the ruling caste first, it is clear that they must
have posited the proud and exalted states of the soul as
" good," as also all that is strength, power, health, well-
constitutedness, happiness and awfulness; the anti-
thesis " Good " and " Bad " to this first class meant the
same as " noble " and " despicable." Even our word
" noble," which was originally expressive of social
status, shows us, when we apply it to character, who
they must have been who first appropriated it as a
designation of their caste.*

" Bad," in the master-morality, must have been ap-
plied to the coward, to the over-anxious and niggling
one, to the man with " the eye to the main chance," as
also to the distrustful one with the stealthy glances, the
self-abasing one, the dog-like kind of man who submits
to being mishandled, to the mendicant flatterer, and
above all to the liar. It is a fundamental belief in all
aristocratic communities, that the mob consists of
liars. " We, truthful ones," thus spake the noble Greeks
of themselves and their equals.

With the second type, the slave-morality, the case is
different. There, inasmuch as the community is an op-
pressed, suffering, unemancipated, and weary one, all
that will be held to be good which alleviates the state of
suffering. Pity, the obliging hand, the warm heart,
patience, industry, humility and a sneaking friendliness

* On this point see Spencer's Sociology (ist Edit.), Vol. I.
p. 687.

The Immoralist

47

towards honours, — these are unquestionably the
qualities which we shall here find flooded with the light
of approval and admiration, because they are the most
useful qualities; — they make life endurable. To this
class, all that is awful, instead of being regarded as
good, as it was in the morality of the ruling caste, will
be precisely the evil par excellence, quite the worst kind
of evil, because it cuts at the very roots of the com-
munity's existence. Strength, health, superabundance
of animal spirits, and antagonistic power of any sort
whatever, are regarded with hate, suspicion and fear by
the ruled class. To them the virtues of their rulers are
vain, pointless, evil. Even the happiness of those above
them, they would fain regard as delusive and spurious.
He is accounted " good " amongst them, who is harm-
less, good-natured, easily-gulled, and perhaps a little
foolish; — in short, a good sort of fellow.*

Now, in this rough analysis of the two fundamental
types of morality, we have our touchstone for the work
of selection which lies before us ; for unless we are quite
apathetic, we must know that the process which is most
needful at the present day, is that of selection: not
alone in morality, but perhaps in every department of
our social life.

As it went with Nietzsche, so it will go with us. We
shall find the master- and the slave-morality every-
where mingled and confused, sometimes beyond recog-
nition. We must not be surprised to find, here and there,
men like harlequins, patched by lord and serf. In cer-
* G. E., pp. 227-232.

48

Nietzsche

tain parts of the world, and not necessarily far from
home, we may find the slave-morality triumphing over
the other kind, and we may there observe what type of
man is tending to dominate under the existing condi-
tions. Before determining what our good and evil are
going to be in the future, the results of such observa-
tions must be duly weighed in our minds. That is what
Nietzsche means when he bids us take our stand be-
yond good and evil; that is the position he would have
all new philosophers assume; it is, at the same time,
the position which has earned for him the titles
" dangerous," " vicious," and " iniquitous," from the
courteous lips of " the good and just."

" There is an old illusion called good and evil," Zara-
thustra declares. " Round fortune-tellers and astrolo-
gers, hitherto, the wheel of that illusion hath turned.

" Once the folk believed in fortune-tellers and astro-
logers, and therefore they believed : ' All is fate. Thou
shalt for thou must.'

"Then, at another time, they mistrusted fortune-
tellers and astrologers, and therefore they believed:
1 All is freedom. Thou canst for thou wilt ! '

" O my brethren, as to the stars and the future, there
hath only been illusion, not knowledge. And therefore,
as to good and evil, there hath also been illusion, not
knowledge! "*

This roughly speaking terminates the account of his
analysis of the past in morality. The questions of con-
science and the sense of guilt, as treated by Nietzsche,

* Z. , " Of Old and New Tables," IF 9.

The Immoralist

49

ought, strictly speaking, to be dealt with now. Seeing,
however, that this could not be done adequately, and
that they both deserve very serious attention, it is per-
haps best to avoid them altogether here, though not
without a hope, that I may be able to treat of them
later.

As we have already seen, Nietzsche was a moralist
as well as an immoralist. He destroyed, only in order to
be able to construct afresh. " He who must be a creator
in good and evil," he says, " verily, he must first be a
destroyer, and break values into pieces."*

Having shown us that morality is merely a matter of
taste, Nietzsche proceeds to divulge his taste in regard
to the all-important subject.

Every notion of good and evil, which we cherish,
Nietzsche, like a numismatist, takes up and examines,
and, before he estimates its worth, inquires in what
class of mental mint the coin originated. This question,
and the relentless way in which he puts it and answers
it, during his examination of modern European values,
practically constitutes the nutshell of his ethics.

The moral code he offers us, in exchange for the one
he would see us partly abandon, and the high ideal to
which it is intended to attain, I cannot now consider
with you. In my next lecture, when I shall treat of
Superman, I will describe Nietzsche's ideal, that is
to say, the Man of his taste, and, in the last one,
"Nietzsche the Moralist," I shall attempt to deal
with the constructive side of his moral philosophy.

* Z., " Of Self-overcoming."

D

50

Nietzsche

Let it now suffice, to perceive, that the slate is clean,
and that we have been warned concerning the blood of
old laws and principles which may crave a place upon
our new tables of commandments.

Morality is a problem which we are left to solve for
ourselves. We must, henceforth, determine our good
and evil. The good and evil of past peoples, races and
tribes, has not been utterly condemned, it has merely
lost the whole of its authority.

Now, since moral valuations are pointless unless
they have a goal in view,* unless they are the expedient
to the enhancement of a certain species of man, it is
obvious that our duty is to decide what this species of
man is going to be, and then to determine our good and
our evil accordingly, f

The responsibility thrown upon us is enormous ; we
are all put upon our mettle; our taste becomes our
prime monitor, and we betray our taste to the world,
when we declare what our ideal, our good and bad, is
going to be, — when we declare whom we would make
master upon earth.

I need hardly to tell you how deeply Nietzsche was con-
scious of the responsibility he threw upon our shoulders
when he invited us to reconsider our position. The
following lines from Zarathustra are evidence enough of
his earnestness, and with them I shall conclude: —

" O my brethren, when I bade you break the good

* Herbert Spencer, Vol. I. p. 33, Principles of Ethics : " . . .
the notion of perfection, like the notion of goodness, can be framed
only in relation to ends."

t See Von Darwin bis Nietzsche (by Dr A. Tille), pp. 19, 22.

The Immoralist

5i

and the tables of the good — it was then only that I put
man on board ship for the high sea.

" Only now cometh the great terror unto him, the
great look round, the great illness, the great loathing,
the great sea-sickness.

" False shores and false securities ye were taught by
the good. In the lies of the good ye were born and
hidden. Through the good, everything hath become de-
ceitful and crooked from the root.

" But he who discovered the land 1 man ' discovered
also the land * human future.'

" Now ye shall be unto me sailors, brave, patient
ones!

" Walk upright betimes, O my brethren, learn how
to walk upright ! The sea stormeth, many wish to raise
themselves with your help.

" The sea stormeth. Everything is in mid-sea. Right
away! Come on ye old sailor hearts! "*

* Z., "Of Old and New Tables," If 28.

THE END OF LECTURE I

II

Superman *

It was found convenient to treat Nietzsche's doctrine
of the Superman, next, in order, and for the reasons
stated in the last paper. It will be remembered that
moral values were there said to be quite pointless,
which did not have the rearing of some particular type
of man as their end, as their goal.

" Who is to be master of the world?" was the question
which recurred in my last lecture ; we saw that this was
entirely a question of taste, and moreover, one left for us
to decide. We saw, also, that in deciding it we involved
ourselves in a still more intricate question, — the ques-
tion of morality, and that the one conditioned the other.

Taking Nietzsche's doctrine of Superman, his taste in
regard to man, first, therefore, we shall be better pre-
pared, when the time comes, to understand the
morality with which he wishes to attain to it; this
morality, as I have already informed you, I shall dis-
cuss in the last paper.

Nietzsche speaks of himself as a firstling and he adds :
" firstlings are ever sacrificed." To the old idols, on the
altars of society's old idols, firstlings are ever sacrificed ;
they are young ; their flesh is still tender ; that tickleth

* Delivered at the University of London on December 2nd, 1908.
52

Superman

53

old palates. How could firstlings help being sacrifices,
since they excite old idol-priests?*

Already in 1883, Nietzsche could speak in this way of
himself and of those whom he wished to rally round
him. Two parts of his Zarathustra had been written;
five most original books had gone out to the world, and
he was beginning to understand, from the reception
these works were receiving, that his mouth was not for
the ears of his time.

What people did not comprehend in him, they dis-
liked; what was new and strange, proved irksome to
them, and everything that threatened to disturb their
smug ease, they did not hesitate to reject. In short, as
he tells us, they sacrificed him, like a firstling, to the
idols that still held sway over them.

Nietzsche made a special diagnosis of European
culture, and he found it attacked by a terrible disease
— the " Paralysis of Will/'f He found Europe settling
down smugly to a pitiable self-complacency, and it was
the struggle of his lifetime to awaken her to a sense of
her danger.

Indeed, so concerned was he, on her account, that he
even wished her a formidable foe, J that she might be
compelled to make up her mind to become equally
formidable. On the one hand there was a sort of
Quietists who believed: " Everything is equal; nothing
is worth while, the world is without sense, knowledge
choketh"; on the other, were those who still clung

* Z., " Of Old and New Tables," If vi.
t G.E., p. 145. % Ibid., p. 146.

54

Superman

fanatically to Christianity as the best alternative, the
best opiate — the softest couch; and there was yet
another class which, although it remained apathetic
concerning superterrestrial possibilities, was willing to
embrace any cause or belief, provided its specific aim
were to bear its adherents to the greatest remoteness
from pain of any kind.

All these classes, however, were unanimous in this
one idealisation of the notion Progress : that it meant
that at some time or other — to be made as proximate
as possible, there would be nothing left to fear, nothing
left to tremble at, in the whole of the civilised world.*

Everywhere, virtue was being associated and con-
founded with those qualities which lead to the greatest
possible amount of ease. The most virtuous man was
the tamest man, because he would be the least likely
person to ruffle other people's feelings, or to make
ripples upon the calm waters of peace and comfort.

Conformity with a given, harmless, domesticated
type, uniformity of manners, views, and little desires ;
these were the ideals of Europe when Nietzsche focussed
his attention upon it, and those Europeans who suc-
ceeded in realising these ideals really believed they had
solved the problem of life.

With his vigorous and full-blooded teaching, Nietz-
sche disturbed the slumbers of the indifferent; he
snatched the soft couches from under the religious ones,
and to those who held, that the greatest good must be
the total suppression of pain, he spoke thus: — " What
* G.E., pp. 125, 126,

Superman

55

is good? ye ask. To be brave is good. Let the little
girlies talk: To be good is sweet and touching at the
same time. Ye say, a good cause will hallow even war ?
I say unto you : a good war halloweth every cause.

" War and courage have done more great things
than the love of one's neighbour."*

Over the so-called virtuous, he lashed himself into a
veritable fury. He told them they were a vulgar herd
whose one preoccupation was the comforting and the
fattening of that herd. " Everything that elevates the
individual above the herd, and is a source of fear to the
neighbour, ye call ' evil,' " he said; on the other hand,
" the tolerant, unassuming, self -adapting, self -equalis-
ing disposition, the mediocrity of desires, attain to
moral distinction and honour " among you.j-

Is it a matter for surprise, that, speaking thus, he
was reviled by a Europe that was steadily dozing off in
smug content ?

We read in Beyond Good and Evil : "It is difficult
and painful for the ear to listen to anything new; we
hear strange music badly. When we hear another lan-
guage spoken, we involuntarily attempt to form the
sounds into words with which we are more familiar and
conversant — it was thus, for example, that we modi-
fied " the French words ecrevisse and chaussee into
crayfish and causeway, and again the German weis-
sager into wiseacre, because " our senses are . . . hostile
and averse to the new." J

♦ Z., "Of War and Warriors." t G.E., pp. 124, 125.

X G.E.,p. 113.

56 Superman

On his own showing therefore, Nietzsche was not
only disturbing, but also painful to the ears of his con-
temporaries. And among the people who wished, at any
cost, to grasp him by identifying his philosophy with
something they thought they already knew, we find
those who call it Egoism * and Materialism, f

I hope to be able to show you it is neither the one nor
the other. Dr Tienes, in an interesting little pamphlet J
calls Nietzsche the Evolutions - ethiker, the moral
philosopher of Evolution, and the epithet is surely de-
served; but, as Spencer very rightly observed: "The
doctrine of Evolution, under its purely scientific form,
does not involve Materialism though its opponents
persistently represent it as doing so."

When Zarathustra came to preach to men for the
third time, he looked for changes in them; . . . "he
wished to learn what in the meantime had gone on
with man, whether he had become taller or smaller,"
and much that he says in this respect will remind
English readers of Mr Kipling's profound lines in the
song entitled " Chant-Pagan ": —

* 1 1 will trek South and make sure
If it's only my fancy or not
That the sunshine of England is pale
And the breezes of England are stale,
And there's something gone small with the lot. "§

* Dr Dolson, The Philosophy of F. Nietzsche , p. loo.
t On this point see Spencer's Collected Essays, Vol. I. p. 386.
% Nietzsche^ Stellung zu den Grundfragen der Ethik genetisch
dargestellt.

§ Rudyard Kipling's The Five Nations, p. 162.

Superman 57

In the third book of Zarathustra's history we read
the following account of his criticism : —
" All hath become smaller!

" Everywhere I see lower doorways. He who is of
my kin, can still pass through them, but — he must
stoop !

" I pass through these people and keep mine eyes
open. They do not forgive me for not being envious of
their virtues.

" They bite at me because I say unto them : ' For
small people, small virtues are necessary,' and because
it is hard for me to understand that small people are
necessary !

" They cough when I speak; they are of opinion that
coughing is an objection to strong winds.

" They divine nothing of the fury of my happiness!

" We have not yet time for Zarathustra! — they say
as an objection. But what matter about a time that
hath ' no time ' for Zarathustra?

" Unto small virtue they would fain allure and flatter
me. To share the ticking of their small happiness, they
would fain persuade my foot.

" I walk through these people and keep mine eyes
open. They have become smaller and are becoming
ever smaller. And the reason thereof is their doctrine of
happiness and virtue.

" And they are modest even in their virtues ; for they
are desirous of ease. But with ease only modest virtue
is compatible.

" Here is little of man ; therefore women try to make

58

Superman

themselves manly. For only he who is enough of a man
will save the woman in woman.

" At bottom they desire plainly one thing most of
all: to be hurt by nobody. Thus they anticipate the
every wish of everyone and do well unto him.

" But this is cowardice; although it be called virtue.

" For them virtue is what maketh modest and tame.
Hereby they made the wolf a dog and man himself,
man's best domestic animal."*

With the gravest misgivings, Nietzsche thus beheld
the condition of the modern Europeans. He saw how
> unexhausted mankind still is for the greatest possi-
bilities, and he wondered how the race could be dir-
ected into channels of thought and valuations which
might lead it to a prouder, more dignified, and higher
state. For this purpose, he declared new philosophers
to be necessary, new commanders — new valuers.
Harder leaders than we have had heretofore must
arise; their hearts must be of brass and their consci-
ences of steel, that they may bear the almost crushing
responsibility of directing a clever, crafty, surreptitious,
comfort-loving and fearful crowd such as the present-
day crowd of modern and satisfied Europeans. But
such philosophers arc certainly coming, they must
come; he tells us their image hovers before his
eyes!

Nietzsche's only fear is, that these coming leaders
may miscarry or degenerate; his one anxiety, his one
gloom is, that they may miss, or deliberately abandon,

* Z., "Of ihe belittling Virtue."

Superman 59

their way, discouraged or overwhelmed by the colossal
dimensions of the task that lies before them.*

" A single individual, alas, only a single individual
am I," Nietzsche cries despairingly, " and this great
forest, this virgin forest " of errors, of prejudices and of
petty, myopic immediate-advantage-seeking principles !

Oh, that I had dogs, assistants, scouts, to help me in
my big hunt ; but courage and sagacity are requisite for
such a hunt, and scholars and all men who could assist
me, are unused to danger nowadays. Where the great
dangers commence, — " it is precisely then that they
lose their keen eye and nose."f

" To entice many from the herd — that is why I have
come. Folk and herd will be angry with me : a robber
Zarathustra wisheth to be called by herdsmen.

" Herdsmen I call them, but they call themselves the
good and the just. Herdsmen I call them, but they call
themselves the fearful of the right belief.

" Lo, the good and just! Whom do they hate most?
Him who breaketh to pieces their table of values, — the
breaker, the law-breaker: — but he is the creator." \

We have seen how, for hundreds of years, Christi-
anity had been the philosophical birthright, so to
speak, of all Europeans and of all people like them : we
have seen how, even the clearest minds, owing to their
having been born into it, were led to regard it pretty
well as a modern town-child regards the pavement in

* G.E., pp. 129, 130. f Ibid., p, 64.

X Z., Introductory Speech, IT 9.

6o

Superman

the street, that is to say, as a thing that is, that always
has been, and ever will be.

We know what it cost the bravest and deepest
thinkers to oppose Christianity, and we have read how
they struggled rather to uphold than to subvert the
old faith, — so tenacious are early and hereditary
associations.

We have spoken of the many centuries, during which
God was pictured as an autocratic power outside the
world whose destiny he determined from second to
second with all the caprice of a primitive tribal chief-
tain, and we watched the transformation of this idea into
pantheism — the belief which placed God in the world,
which made the world a manifestation of God's being.

The relations between man and this new God of
Pantheism, it is true, were not so familiar, not so con-
fidential, as the previous ones had been ; but men could
still honour and respect Him, and that is all that this
new teaching demanded of them.

Still, even this view, broad as it was, did not entirely
satisfy natural scientists. It was the latter 's ambition
to ascribe all phenomena to natural law. The thought of
an interfering deity's underlying the natural world was
discomfiting to them ; it rendered their generalisations
problematic. Otherwise, however, they were not un-
friendly to a notion of God, and they and their followers
therefore circumvented the difficulty by means of this
really creditable stratagem: — God would still be up-
held, and still be believed in, but He must be made in-
nocuous in so far as their text-books were concerned;

Superman

61

He must be placed outside the world again. It would be
admitted that He had created it, and that its laws were
divine laws; but on this condition: that it would be
thoroughly understood that God ceased to take any
active part in the proceedings, once He had established
their fundamental laws. This was Deism.

This belief accorded perfectly with all the needs of
the time. It allowed of scientists prosecuting their re-
searches undisturbed by fears of incurring stigma, and
it enabled those among the educated classes, who were
inclined to lend a friendly ear to science, to read
learned works with a clear conscience.

Such, roughly speaking, was the state of affairs, when
Kant approached the question of General Metaphysics,
and, in dealing with it, killed it. The very existence of
the God, who had been given so many different inter-
pretations, was shown by Kant to be not even demon-
strable. Kant not only showed that the God of the
Christians could not be proved ; but that the proofs of
all Gods, all Metaphysics, were imperfect, impossible —
impudent. Uv .v*t io «.«*e: Savah)

In morality, however, Kant granted an authority to
human reason, which he denied it in metaphysics.
Where morality is concerned, he believes in liberty, in
the inexorable law of duty, in the necessary harmony
between happiness and virtue, and, in this way, he
practically committed himself to the re-establishment of
those principles which the ones above imply, namely: —
the existence of God, and the immortality of the soul.
Metaphysics is not a possible science, let us, however,

62

Superman

abide by what we have already been given in this re-
spect. Revealed religion is already with us; it may be
needful for us to have such a religion ; in any case, it is
a comfort : let us tolerate it !

Thus, Kant's uncompromising attitude towards
Metaphysics, in theory, was followed by a compromise
on his part, where practice was concerned, which
materially weakened his position, and I hardly need
tell you how eagerly thinking people availed themselves
of Kant's high authority in order, once more, to give
their whole minds and hearts up to the " right belief,"
as Nietzsche characterises it.

The flame of Christianity was fanned once more
among the educated classes. And, in view of the eminent
philosophical sanction it had suddenly acquired, was it
not perfectly natural that it should as suddenly experi-
ence a period of enormous prosperity and support ? Kant
had shown that nothing could be certain in the realm
of Metaphysics ; why not, therefore, espouse the cause
of that belief which had stood the test of years ? Why
not embrace the improbable provided it were super-
annuated ?

This revival in the " true belief," however, proved to
be but of a very transient nature. It gradually dawned
upon Europe, that the blow levelled at Metaphysics
was one that could be ill warded off, and a period of
doubt soon superseded the inflamed return to Christi-
anity. The belief in God, where it survived, was seen to
have been considerably weakened, and hundreds of
thousands had it no more.

Superman

63

It was then, according to Dr Ernst Horneffer, the late
Director of the Nietzsche Archives, that a general discon -
tent and hopelessness in the hearts of thinking Europe-
ans, paved theway for what is now known as Pessimism.*

Sully, in his interesting work on the subject, rather
seems to overlook the influence of godlessness upon
the hearts of educated Europeans, in relation to the
elaborate Pessimism which flourished in Europe in the
early part of the nineteenth century and a little later.

There can, however, be little doubt, that the world
without a God seemed strange and cold to those who were
deep enough wholly to realise it in this altered aspect.

It will be said, perhaps, that Pessimism is as old as
the ancient philosophers. This is perfectly true, and in
the religion founded by Buddha, we have one of the
most striking examples of early desperate views of life
having been formulated into a system of Quietism,
symbolised by the one doctrine of Nirvana. But the
great pessimistic movement among Europeans of the
nineteenth century certainly owes its origin to an im-
pulse greater than that which can be sought in the
influence of ancient melancholy. When, therefore, Dr
Ernst Horneffer points to the cold and comfortless
feeling of godlessness which sprung from Hume's,
Kant's and their followers' teaching, I think we may
safely go the whole way with him, more particularly
when we remember, that Buddhism, itself, also denied
the existence of a Creator and any absolute Being, f

* See Vortragc iiber Nietzsche, pp. 42, 43.
t James Sully, Pessimism, p. 38.

64

Superman

Now, as we have already observed, the world without
a God seemed strange and cold, and men were unused
to these conditions. They had become adapted to
another environment, where prayers, hopes of after
life, and fear of punishment after death, had reigned
almost as fixed ideas. Suddenly bereft of these fixed
ideas they had, as suddenly, become ill- adapted; and
who means to doubt that Pessimism, in any form, is
anything more than the expression of ill-adaptedness
which does not recognise itself as such?

Responsibility had been laid on the shoulders of a
divinity for centuries ; it now seemed to lie very heavily
indeed upon the shoulders of men. And, having relin-
quished all past interpretations of what people will
persist irrationally in calling " the First Cause," they
began to ask themselves: " What is this world? What
is its object ? What are we all driving at ? If there be no
God, no Heaven to go to, no Hell to which we may
relegate our enemies ; what, indeed, is the point of ex-
istence? Where, if you please, is the joke? "

It is no joke, Pessimism replied. It is a most ghastly
reality, which we are here to endure, come what may.
It is a most horrible torment which is in vain, which has
no object, no sense, no explanation. It is the worst of
all possible worlds, and in it we are suffering victims,
without a hope, without an ideal, without even a
justification for our pain! Godlessness is unspeakable —
hideous !

Byron in England, Schopenhauer in Germany, Leo-
pardi in Italy, and Mme. Ackermann in France : each of

Superman

65

these voiced the sentiments of those who were at their
wits' end in a Godless world; while among those whose
works, although not avowedly pessimistic, yet contain
passages which betray a tincture of Pessimism, we find
Lamartine, Heine and Carlyle.

There were many, however, who did not share these
melancholy views. Although they had severed them-
selves from the Church, a large number, then as now,
were totally and comfortably indifferent. Thousands
smiled superciliously at Pessimism and lisped: " It will
be all the same a hundred years hence! "

But the thinking world, the deep world, the world
that looks for an object in existence, and will have an
ideal after which it may strive — this world was in
despair !

Now, Schopenhauer spoke to this world and taught
it a doctrine whereby it might defy its wretchedness
and steel itself against life's horrors. He, too, saw in a
Godless world a pointless abomination; he, too, could
see no excuse for the prevailing pain, nor any justifica-
tion for the misery of the subjected and oppressed, and,
overcome by his loathing of life and the universe, he
inveighs against both with a bitterness which throws
all other pessimists into the shade.

Nietzsche describes how an accident revealed
Schopenhauer's works to him. He tells us how he
chanced one day to come across a copy of The World as
Will and Idea, at the old Rohn curiosity shop in Leip-
zig, and how something urged him to buy it, despite
the fact that he did not usually decide in a hurry con-

E

66

Superman

cerning the purchase of any book. He goes on to de-
scribe, how, at home, immediately after the purchase,
he dropped into a corner of a sofa, and began to let
Schopenhauer's energetic and gloomy genius work upon
him; he exclaims: " here every line cried out, renunci-
ation, denial, resignation ; here I saw a mirror in which
I espied the world, life, and my own mind, depicted in
frightful grandeur, "and, he adds: "the need of knowing
myself, yes, even of gnawing at myself, forcibly seized
me."*

Nietzsche's sister, however, gives us the most strik-
ing description of her brother's attachment to Schopen-
hauer.

" Schopenhauer," she says, " was not a book for him,
but a friend. The philosopher was already dead when
my brother first became acquainted with his works,
otherwise he would have journeyed to him immediately,
in order to greet him as a friend and a father, for,
throughout his childhood and youth, he had yearned
for the fatherly friend whom he had missed so sorely,
owing to our father's all too early death, "f

But, we shall see that a radical and permanent
change was very soon to manifest itself in Nietzsche's
attitude towards his great teacher. Seeing, however,
that he does not reject Schopenhauer's philosophy
completely, but adopts all that he thinks is tenable
in it, and thereon builds up his own teaching, a careful
examination of Schopenhauer's views is now inevitable.

* Das Leben Friedrich Nietzsche 's by E. Foerster-Nietzsche,
Vol. I. pp. 231, 232. t Ibid., p. 280.

Superman

67

In the year 1781, when Kant was well over fifty
years of age, his world-renowned Critique of the Pure
Reason was published. In this book, to the writing of
which, as he himself assures us, he was incited by the
scepticism of David Hume, he undertook the examina-
tion of the origin, extent, and limits of human know-
ledge, and unfolded his doctrine of the relativity of all
knowledge. He tried to establish " the distinction be-
tween phenomena — whose substance is given us through
impressions on the senses, but whose form is a purely
subjective product of the mind itself — and real things
or ' things-in-themselves,' which exists out of relation
to time, space, or causality."*

He shows us, in this Critique, that what we call ex-
ternal objects are really only mental representations
resulting from the nature of our sensibility. To us they
are mere appearances, the inner nature of which we can
never ascertain. The appearance of the things we know,
the things-in-themselves, we do not and cannot know.
Nevertheless, in opposition to Berkeley, Kant declares
that although we do not know how, " we must assume
that transcendental objects or things-in-themselves
exist."f

Summing up the results of his demonstration of these
views, in the General Observations on the Transcendental
Aesthetic, Kant writes as follows: — " That the things
which we perceive are not what we take them to be nor

* Ueberweg's History of Philosophy, translated by G. S- Morris,
A.M., Vol. II. p. 160.
t Ibid., p. 176.

68

Superman

their relations of such intrinsic nature as they appear
to us to be; and that if we make abstraction of our-
selves as knowing subjects, or even only of the subjec-
tive constitution of our senses generally, all the
qualities, all the relations of objects in space and time,
yes, and even space and time themselves, disappear,
and that as phenomena they cannot exist really per se
but only in us ; what may be the character of things-in-
themselves, and wholly separated from our receptive
sensibility, remains wholly unknown to us."*

Greatly admiring Kant, and adopting many of his
first principles, Arthur Schopenhauer as a young man
of twenty-six years of age, deeply versed in the lore of
Hindu antiquity, took up Kant's doctrine of the rela-
tivity of our knowledge, and developed it in his princi-
pal work, The World as Will and Idea, by attempting to
show that, although the world is only our notion — our
idea, if we regard another aspect of it, we can actually
arrive at a knowledge of things in themselves ; we can
learn the inner nature of external objects.

In what concerns our perception of the outside
world, he adopts Kant's view, that we are totally un-
able to derive from our mental representation of it any
knowledge whatever of it as it really is. The inner
nature of external objects, in the process of imaging
them in our minds, completely eludes our perceptive
powers. It must be clear to everyone, says Schopen-
hauer, " that what he knows is not a sun and an earth,

♦ Ueberweg's History of Philosophy, translated by G. S. Morris
A. M., Vol. II. p. 166.

Superman

69

but only an eye that sees a sun, and a hand that feels
an earth ; that the world which surrounds him is there
only as idea, i.e. only in relation to something else, the
consciousness which is himself.*

" No truth, therefore, is more certain, more inde-
pendent of all others, and less in need of proof than
this, that all that exists for knowledge, and therefore
this whole world, is only object in relation to subject,
perception of a perceiver, in a word, idea."f

But, he continues ..." the inward reluctance with
which anyone accepts the world as merely his idea,
warns him that this view of it, however true it may be,
is nevertheless one-sided. :[:

" The consciousness of everyone is in general opposed
to the explanation of objects as mere ideas. § The ob-
jective world, the world as idea, is not the only side of
the world, but merely its outward side; and it has an
entirely different side — the side of its inmost nature —
its kernel — the thing-in-i tself . ' ' 1 1

How can we discover what this kernel, this thing-in-
itself is ? That was the problem Schopenhauer set him-
self to solve in his work, The World as Will and Idea.
We have seen that we cannot arrive at this real nature
of things from without. But, says Schopenhauer, we are
objects in nature, we are things among things, ]f and of
ourselves we have a special, second view which we can-
not have of other things. Besides being an object of
perception, the body of each individual is known to

* The World as Will and Idea, translated by R. B. Haldane
and J. Kemp, Vol. I. p. 3. t Ibid.

% Ibid., p. 4. § /diet., p. 23. || Ibid., p. 39. IT Ibid., p. 129.

70

Superman

him in its inner nature; he knows its kernel immedi-
ately:* and what is this kernel, Schopenhauer asks,
which each can immediately perceive in himself? Is it
not that which we call mind or spirit — that embodi-
ment of Feeling, Volition and Intellect, which some call
soul?

In recognising these several attributes of mind which
we call Feeling, Volition and Intellect, have we not
perhaps brought ourselves into the presence of the
whole of our inner nature, our kernel, — our other as-
pect of the objects which we are?

Feeling, Volition and Intellect, however, are not the
simplest expression of our inner nature. There is an
attribute in us, which, according to Schopenhauer,
must be the ultimate attribute. Let us examine Feeling,
Volition and Intellect, under his guidance.

In the first place, he lets them fall into two distinct
groups, of which Feeling and Volition are one, and
Intellect and its derivative. Understanding, Reasoning
and Thought are the other.

It used to be customary to allot Intellect the first
place in a classification of our mental phenomena ; but
Schopenhauer denies its primitive importance. Again
and again he tells us, " the intellect, like the claws and
teeth, is nothing else than a weapon in the service of
the will,"j it is " the lantern of the will," or "an
assistant organ of the will."

In every blind force of Nature, Schopenhauer sees a

* The World as Will and Idea, translated by R. B. Haldane
and J. Kemp, Vol. I. pp. 129, 130. t Ibid., Vol. III. p. 166.

Superman

7i

factor that cannot be accounted for by an appeal to
intellect; in the early actions of animals as also in all
functions of our body which are not guided by know-
ledge, a power is at work which has nothing in common
with the Understanding or with Reason.

If we observe ourselves closely, we do, indeed, find
that the distinction between the parts played by the
group Feeling and Volition, and that played by Intel-
lect, is more marked than we should at first suppose.

Examining Feeling and Volition, first, we are so
struck by the way in which each of these necessitates
the other, that we see no possibility of separating them.
Every feeling we have involves an action of our will ;
for, if it be agreeable, we will have that which awakens
it in us, whereas, if it be disagreeable, we will not have
it active under any circumstances. Willing and feeling
— how can they be thought of apart?* From the very
dawn of our lives, they, as one phenomenon infallibly
guide us to perform life-preserving actions without the
very slightest assistance from the Intellect, which can
only act upon acquired knowledge.

We may take it, therefore, that our inner life consists
of these two sharply-defined mental attributes: the
Intellect with its derivatives : Understanding, Reason-
ing, and Thought, and the Will which, as we have seen,
covers Feeling, f

Now, are Will and Intellect equally important to us ?

* The World as Will and Idea, translated by R. B. Haldane
and J. Kemp, Vol. I. pp. 130, 131.

t In support of this view see Spencer's Principles of Psychology.
Vol. I. pp. 500-503.

72 Superman

Could one be shown to be more primitive, to be more
essential to us than the other? As we have already im-
plied, Schopenhauer answers yes, in favour of Will.

The intellect is an instrument, a mere means in the
service of the will. We desire, we want, we will hare
something, hence our intellect is employed, that tiis
desiring, this wanting, this willing, may be stilled. Our
passions, our love, hate, and physical appetites, ire
matters of feeling and will, and we certainly do nuke
our intellect work, in order to find the means of minis-
tering to them. But they are the primitive force, intel-
lect is but their intermediary.

For a very long time, the intellect was thought to
play the most important part in our lives. It is quite
impossible, however, to retain that belief any longer.
The ultimate factor in our existence, therefore, the
thing-in-itself, which we have been seeking, is will;* for
we cannot avoid giving intellect a secondary place.

Schopenhauer then proceeds to invest everything
about us with will. " It is the inmost nature, the kernel
of every particular thing, and also of the whole, "f

And what is this will, which is the hidden spring of
all existence? Schopenhauer calls it the blind " Will to
Live."

Everywhere, among creatures that are driven by
this blind will, he sees warfare, oppression, suffocation,
maiming, torture, misery. The weeds stifle the noble
and useful plants, these again exhaust the nourishment

* The World as Will and Idea, translated by R. B. Haldane and
Kemp, Vol. I. p. 136. t Ibid., p. 143.

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73

of the weeds. A mighty oak is here fettered and inter-
laced by a gigantic, wild vine, in whose fatal embrace
it at last withers as if choked.* Elsewhere we see
magnificent trees burgeoning and flourishing in the
rays of the sun in spring, and preventing the quickening
light from reaching struggling shrubs which try to eke
out an existence at their feet. " Everywhere, in Nature,
we see strife, conflict and alternation of victory, f This
universal conflict becomes most distinctly visible in
the animal kingdom ... for each animal can only main-
tain its existence by the constant destruction of some
other. Thus the will to live, everywhere preys upon
itself, and in different forms is its own nourishment;
till, finally, the human race, because it subdues all the
others, regards Nature as a manufactory for its use." J

" But an optimist bids me open my eyes and look at
the world, how beautiful it is in the sunshine, with its
mountains and valleys, streams, plants, animals, etc.
etc. ... Is the world then a raree show? These things
are certainly beautiful to look at, but to be them is some-
thing quite different.§

" And, to this world," Schopenhauer exclaims, " to
this scene of tormented and agonised beings, who can
only continue to exist by devouring each other; in
which, therefore, every ravenous beast is the living
grave of thousands of others, and its self-maintenance
is a chain of painful deaths ; and in which the capacity
for feeling pain increases with knowledge, and there-

* The World as Will and Idea, translated by R. B. Haldane
and J. Kemp, Vol. I. p. 193. f Ibid., p. 191.

% Ibid., p. 192. § Ibid., Vol. III. p. 392.

74

Superman

fore reaches its highest degree in man, a degree which
is the higher, the more intelligent the man is; to this
world it has been sought to apply the system of optim-
ism, and demonstrate to us that it is the best of all
possible worlds! The absurdity is glaring! "*

Schopenhauer turns in horror from the world he thus
depicts. This shambles in which the blind Will to Live
reigns like an evil and blood-thirsty spirit, he cannot
endure to contemplate. The sufferings of existence
choke him; in the voice of Nature, he hears but an ex-
asperated groan, in her smiles he reads deception, hoax,
vanity. With man, he declares, the blind Will has
reached self-consciousness. It is for man, therefore, to
see that it may turn against itself in man — neutralise
itself in him. By means of renunciation, asceticism, and
the negation of Will, Schopenhauer tells mankind, this
abominable record of pain, iniquity and injustice,
which we call Life, may be arrested. Man's highest aim,
therefore, must, at all costs, be the destruction of the
Will to Live in the midst of Life! — the conversion of
the shudder and quiver of agony into the stiff stillness
of apathy, the transformation of misery into nothing-
ness— nonentity — Nirvana !

As Schopenhauer turned in horror from the world he
depicted, so Nietzsche ultimately turned in horror from
Schopenhauer. Gradually he learned to regard the
hopelessness, the unmanliness, the effeminate surrender

* The World as Will and Idea, translated by R. B. Haldane
and J. Kemp, Vol. III. p. 392.

Superman

75

to sorrow, and the cowardly despair under the weight
of Godlessness, which underlay the philosophy of
Germany's greatest pessimist, with indomitable hatred ;
nay — nausea. Slowly it dawned upon him that Scho-
penhauer's Nihilism was no more than a short-sighted
misrepresentation of facts, an attractive deception on
a large scale, prepared only for the weak, the spiritless,
and, above all, the ill-constituted.

Now, ready as we may be to grant, that God and the
Christian Ideal had hitherto, perhaps, been mankind's
greatest thought, we cannot help attributing much of
the pessimism which invariably follows their with-
drawal from men's hearts, to the complete failure of
past iconoclasts in providing an adequate substitute
for the idols which they destroyed. Nietzsche, who was
the descendant of a long line of clergymen, and whose
piety, as a boy, had been the delight of his relatives,
knew as well as anyone could know, what Christianity
means to those who sincerely profess it ; he did not need
to be told that he who attempts to destroy this power-
ful Faith, may find himself the indirect author of more
errors and consequently more trouble than the Faith
itself could ever account for. He knew, therefore, as
perhaps few knew, that those who sally forth against
Christianity with the sword of destruction in one hand,
must also be prepared to wield the magic wand of con-
struction pretty dexterously with the other. Something
stupendous must be offered as a substitute, something
equally capable of enthralling the minds of men and
women. We must have a treasure for our riches.

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Superman

Nietzsche knew the vast beauty and power of the
substitute he had to offer, he knew he came loaded with
gifts for men; hence his good cheer, his exaltation;
hence, too, the laughter with which he would infect
us.

" God is disproved," he says; " but why despair on
that account?

" God is a supposition; but I would have your sup-
position reach no further than your creative will.

" God is a supposition; but I would have your sup-
posing limited by conceivableness.

" God is a supposition; but who would drink all the
pain of that supposition without dying?

" Creating — that is the great salvation from suffer-
ing and alleviation of life.

" But what could be created, if there were Gods!*

" And when I cry: ' Curse all cowardly devils within
yourselves who would fain whine and fold their hands
and adore ! ' — They cry : ' Zarathustra is ungodly ! '

" And so chiefly their teachers of submission cry.
But in their ears I rejoice to cry: ' Yea! I am Zara-
thustra the ungodly ! 9

"I am Zarathustra the ungodly. Where find I my
like? And all those are my like who give themselves a
will of their own and renounce all submission.

" Ye become ever smaller, ye small folk! ye com-
fortable ones, ye crumble away! One day ye will
perish —

" From your many small virtues, from your many

* Z., "On the Blissful Islands."

Superman

77

small omissions, from your continual petty submis-
sion!*

" I rejoice to cry: ' Yea, I am Zarathustra the un-
godly!"'

Thus we see, that, far from deploring, Nietzsche actu-
ally applauds the news that God had been disproved.
It might perhaps be said, speaking biologically, that he
was one of the first among modern European thinkers,
to become adapted to the idea of Godlessness, and
therefore to feel hopeful, strong, nay — creative under
its influence. In any case, he leaves us in no doubt re-
garding his reasons for rejoicing. He says, at last, my
eyes can turn towards mother-earth; and seek their
hope there ! The plans I make, the things I do, will be
of the earth ; they will belong to no back- world or be-
yond, towards which all humanity has been squinting
for centuries, with the result that it has neglected its
life here. " God is dead," man is now responsible for
himself; he must seek a goal in manhood; he is left
standing alone ; the spirit of fight is kindled in him ; the
nymph of sport and of self-reliance, nudges him that he
may notice her and make her his most faithful hand-
maiden. He is now at liberty to find an ideal in this
world, not in a back-world, a beyond; but here on
earth, and this ideal he may now strive to realise and"
thereby improve his race. Odious comparisons are at
last going to cease. This world, whatever its defects
may be, is no more to be backbitten by people whose
incredible lack of sporting instincts allow them to
* Z., " Of the belittling Virtue."

78 Superman

decry and caluminate the existing and the perceptible,
in favour of the imaginary and imperceptible.

For the sake of his generation and the future, there-
fore, Nietzsche bravely denounced the friend and
teacher, who had been all to him ; the pessimistic point
of view, even in a godless world, was distasteful to him,
and he began a campaign against Schopenhauer's
teaching, which, for bitterness and implacability, has
perhaps never yet been equalled in the annals of philo-
sophical enmity.

But he never forgot the debt he owed to the man
he was opposing, and in Volume X. of his Complete
Works we find the following tribute to Schopenhauer's
memory: —

" Far be it from me to believe that I ever properly
understood Schopenhauer; but through him I learnt to
know myself a little better, and for this reason, alone,
he has my deepest gratitude."

It must be remembered, that Nietzsche was not
fighting Schopenhauer and his disciples alone ; he was
fighting an indifferent and sluggish Europe, which, he
declared, was reclining and decaying lazily in a fool's
paradise. People then, as now, were adopting and
practising so-called virtues, not because they were the
means to what he regarded as a higher development of
society, not because they would lead to an ideal caste
of men; but because they were wretchedly comfortable,
above all, safe and, in any case, not discordant with the
views of the majority.

In the midst of this expedient morality which was

\

Superman

79

devoid of any noble character, Schopenhauer's inter-
pretation of Buddhistic Quietism had gradually begun
to flourish "with almost tropical luxuriance"; the
youth of Germany, in Nietzsche's time, mustered in
thousands beneath Schopenhauer's banner, and the
whole of Western Europe seemed to be a victim of the
one monomania: that of seeking ease — smug ease, at
any cost, to the neglect of all higher and worthier
aims.

The view of life held by a very large class of Euro-
peans of that time, whether they knew of Pessimism or
did not, is admirably summed up by Schopenhauer in a
discourse upon the Vanity and sufferings of Life. Here
he tells us: — " Whatever one may say, the happiest
moment of the happy man is the moment of his falling
asleep, and the unhappiest moment of the unhappy
that of his waking."*

This resigned doctrine revolted Nietzsche. In spite of
there being no God, as we have seen, he recognised an
aim, a worthy object in life. He saw noble goals which
men could reach, without straining after the debatable
requirements of a back-world, and without competing
for very doubtful rewards. He therefore turned round
upon the teacher to whom he owed most ; because he
had something better, greater and nobler to teach than
Quietism. He had to show us that life had sense, signifi-
cance and worth.

• ••••• •

* Vol. III. p. 389, The World as mil and Idea. Haldane and
Kemp's translation.

8o

Superman

Nietzsche adopts Schopenhauer's metaphysics and
builds his teaching upon it.

He also regards blind Will as the motive force of the
universe ; but he does not think this will is a will to life,
A but, as we have already heard, a Will to Power.

" Wherever I found living matter," he says, " I
found will for power, and even in the servant I found
the yearning to be a master.

Only where there is life, there is will: though not
will to live, but thus I teach thee — will to power.

" Many things are valued higher by living things
than life itself; but even out of valuing speaketh will
unto power!*

" Psychologists should bethink themselves, before
putting down the instinct of self-preservation as the
cardinal instinct of an organic being. A living thing
seeks above all to discharge its strength — life itself is
Will to Power ; self-preservation is only one of the in-
direct and most frequent results thereof."!

Now upon this base, " the Will to Power," Nietzsche
constructs a philosophy which, unlike Schopenhauer's,
says " Yea " to life and blesses it; — a philosophy which
presents us with an ideal compatible with man's great
record, and one which gives us something worthy of
acceptance in exchange for what it takes away.

Nietzsche is not blind to the suffering in this world,
on the contrary, he sees even more deeply into it than
his predecessors; but he is pleased with it; he blesses
it too; for, in pain he sees the greatest educating and

* "Of Self-overcoming." t G.E., p. 20.

Superman

81

ennobling force of Nature. He who was a continual
sufferer from cruel disorders, who had served in a
German ambulance during the Franco-German war,
and who, as a boy at school, had twice sought to
temper his playmates' admiration for Mucius Scaevola,
by severely burning his own hand in their presence,*
was not the kind of man to meditate poetically about
pain. What he says about it we can listen to with atten-
tion, we know it to be more than idle theorising. Now,
again and again, in his later works, we find Nietzsche
laying stress upon the value and necessity of pain; and
it is not improbable, that passages of the kind I refer
to f must have gone a long way, when misunderstood,
towards earning the reputation of brutality for his
philosophy, which so many in Germany, England and
France are trying their utmost to keep alive.

" The discipline of suffering, of great suffering," says
Nietzsche, " know ye not that it is only this discipline
that has produced all the elevations of humanity
hitherto ? The tension of soul in misfortune which com-
municates to it its energy, its shuddering in view of
rack and ruin, its inventiveness and bravery in undergo-
ing, enduring, interpreting, and exploiting misfortune,
and whatever depth, mystery, disguise, spirit, artifice, or
greatness has been bestowed upon the soul, has it not
been bestowed through the discipline of great suffer-
ing ?J Profound suffering makes noble, it separates.' '§

* Das Leben Friedrich Nietzsche's, by E. Foerster-Nietzsche,
Vol. I. pp. 105, 106.

f More particularly pp. 74, 75, 76 in Genealogy of Af orals.
% G E., p. 171. § Ibid., p. 248.

F

82 Superman

Elsewhere he rebukes all those who would fain attain
to " the universal green-meadow happiness of the herd,
together with security, safety, comfort, and alleviation
of life for everyone," and who regard suffering " as
something which must be done away with. We opposite
ones," he adds, " who have opened our eyes and con-
science to the question how and where the plant ' man '
has hitherto grown most vigorously, believe that this
has always taken place under the opposite conditions,
that for this end the dangerousness of his situation had
to be increased enormously, his inventive faculty and
dissembling power (his ' spirit ') had to develop into
subtlety and daring under long oppression and com-
pulsion."*

The fear and hatred of pain is paralysing, it checks
the adventurous spirit. Just as the fear of losing may
keep the vain man from playing a game, so the fear of
suffering may keep many from playing a bold part in
the game of life. But there are other reasons behind
Nietzsche's praise of suffering.

How many among you have not already sought, —
feverishly sought, perhaps, — to understand the Hedo-
nists— those who attempt to base our morality, our
good and evil, upon the feelings " pleasure " and
" pain." Those of you who have done so, who have
read, among other books, Sidgwick's somewhat tedious

* G.E., p. 59. Compare also Heraclitus, who says : " Homer was
wrong in saying, ' would that strife might perish from among Gocis
and men ! ' He did not see that he was praying for the destruction
of the universe ; for if his prayer were heard all things would pass
away."

Superman 83

work, The Methods of Ethics,* his puzzling attack on
Herbert Spencer's Hedonism, f and Spencer's equally
puzzling reply; those of you, I say, who have done this,
must very often have despaired of ever coming to a
solution of the vexed question.

It is remarkable, that once an idea like that of
Hedonism becomes thoroughly appropriated by one or
two philosophers, it is almost certain to get buried and
completely hidden from the view of the lay-excursionist
into philosophy, thanks to the mountain of words with
which those who are supposed to elucidate it, system-
atically smother it.

Any layman to-day, who, with the ingenuousness
which characterises his kind, happens to inquire,
" What is Hedonism? " or " Where is Hedonism? " will
be told: " It belongs to Messrs So-and-So the Phil-
osophers," or " Messrs Thingumbob the Logicians," as
a matter of fact, though, only the mountain concealing
the subject belongs to these gentlemen.

What is Hedonism? We may well ask: Why is Nietz-
sche so unfriendly to it,{ and why does he speak so
reverently of pain ? Turning to an ordinary dictionary
of the English language, after having laid philosophical
treatises aside, it is quite a relief to find it described in
one line, as " the doctrine, in ethics, that happiness is
the greatest good."

* For a very interesting criticism of this work see Alfred Fouillee's
Critique des Systimes de Morale Contemporains •, pp. 36-38.

t See W. H. Rolph's interesting attack upon Spencer in reference
to the same subject in Biologische Probleme (Edit. 1884), pp. 50, 51.

X 5*rG.E., pp. 118, 119, 170.

84

Superman

Now, if we understand what is meant by happiness
here, it looks as if we knew all we wanted to know. How
should we define happiness in this case? Happiness
roughly speaking means that state to which we have
attained, when we perform those actions which we are
best apt to perform ; in fact we cannot do better than to
say, it means complete adaptation, it means that state
to which an organism arrives, when it is in complete
harmony with its environment. What happiness then
means to the individual, may be still further defined;
but, as this definition could answer no purpose here,
we are glad to escape from the need of attempting
it.

To proceed, and not forgetting that Herbert Spencer
is careful to admit, that although happiness cannot
perhaps be made the immediate, it may be made the
ultimate aim of an action, let us turn to Nietzsche, and
see what he says.

Nietzsche declares that there is a tremendous as-
sumption underlying all Hedonism, and it is this : that
the urging of a perfectly possible, complete adaptation
"P to any environment, presupposes that this particular
environment is a desirable one to become adaptated to.
He points out that an environment may be unworthy
of one's adaptating one's self to it ; consequently, that
complete adaptation to it would be a mistaken rather
than a justified step. His attitude towards Hedonism
is the attitude of the parent towards the lazy school-
boy. " Is it not too early in your life to be lazy? " the
parent asks the lazy schoolboy. "Is it not too early,

Superman 85

yet, to preach Hedonism? "* is Nietzsche's question to
us, and with it he practically states his objection to the
teaching. Complete adaptation to our present environ-
ment, if it were possible, would undoubtedly, I suppose,
lead to happiness ; what has to be decided first, though,
is whether we actually have an environment which
really corresponds to the highest possibilities we are
capable of, whether our environment is a desirable one,
at all, to become adapted to.

Nietzsche's attitude towards pain is now, in a
measure, explained.

Pain, as a rule, means adaptation which is faulty,
incomplete or totally lacking. He conjures us, therefore,
not to go out of the way of pain any more ; nor to lose
our patience under it;for, if we should do these things
in spite of his warning, the catastrophe he most wishes
/Mo avert, might occur — we might become adapted.

The heroic attitude assumed in all his books is now
more easily understood. His life, too, appears more
transparent, if we wish to read this new meaning into
it. But, what, above all, is understood, is his doctrine
of the Superman ; and with this word, we come to the
fundamental question of his philosophy.

Of course, we know that this doctrine is purely
hortatory; but what is its purpose? Its purpose is to
give us the picture of a type to which we might attain,

* "Will it not always be too early to preach Hedonism?" is
really his implied question ; for there is no reason to believe that his
Superman is intended by him to be the very ultimate development :
hence, even complete adaptation, if it were possible, under Super-
man, will not be strictly in harmony with Nietzschean philosophy.

86 Superman

to which it is possible for us to attain, and after which
he would have us strive. Its incidental purpose is to
show us by comparison that our present ideals of man-
hood and womanhood are mean, unworthy of our great
past, and certainly quite unworthy of all the powers
which are still unexhausted in us.

The possibility of attaining to the Superman, is to
be our warrant for pain ; it is to be the significance of
our refusing to adapt ourselves to existing conditions.
Hitherto, we have had no meaning for pain. Superman
is to be that meaning. Nietzsche had this one great
advantage over his eminent teacher, Schopenhauer,
namely, that when he approached the problem of the
universe, Europe was already in possession of Darwin's
great book, The Origin of Species.

It may be even said, that Nietzsche actually returned
critically to Schopenhauer with the theory of Evolution
as his scalpel. And he saw, then, what Schopenhauer
could not very well have seen : That this long and cruel
process of evolution, impelled by the blind Will to
Power which spurs on all things, gave a meaning and
an importance to life/ which the notion of unalterable
Being could not offer. He saw hope and promise in the
thought that this world is a Becoming and not a Being,
and, in revaluing Schopenhauer's Will to Live as Will
to Power, he also revalued the Pessimistic Weltan-
schauung into one of the most thorough-going optimistic
philosophies that has ever yet been taught.

Recognising, like Heraclitus, the eternal flux of
things, Nietzsche says: —

Superman

87

" Everything goeth, everything returneth. For ever
rolleth the wheel of existence. Everything dieth, every-
thing blossometh again. For ever runneth the year of
existence."*

Nietzsche in one sense was a Darwinian. All his later
works bear the unmistakable stamp of the Theory of
Evolution as taught by our most celebrated naturalist ;
but, although Darwin's teaching as to the " Descent of
Man," with all its consequences, moral and physical,
meets with Nietzsche's partial assent, the two philo-
sophers differ seriously in respect of the question of
means, — in respect of the question of the lines upon
which the process of evolution worked. Nietzsche, how-
ever, is not alone in finding fault with Darwin's de-
monstration of the laws governing evolution, and,
although he only transformed the " Struggle for exist-
ence " into the " Struggle for power," the alteration is
one of such far-reaching importance and involves so
many new aspects of the Development Hypothesis,
that, as we have already seen, whether it be right or
wrong, we cannot dispose of it at a breath, as a mere
play upon words.

Evolution, therefore, in the widest possible sense of
the term, Nietzsche accepted conditionally, as an ex-
planation of the origin of species ; but he did not halt
where most naturalists have halted. He by no means
regarded man as the highest possible being which evo-
lution could arrive at. If the process be a fact; if things
have become what they are, and were not always so;

* Z., " The Convalescent One," IT 2.

88

Superman

then, he contends, we may describe no limit to the
aspirations of man. If it were possible for him to struggle
up from barbarism, and still more remotely from the
lower Primates, then, says Nietzsche, his ideal, his
ambition should be to surpass man himself and reach
Superman.

The raising of society to a higher level is Nietzsche's
aim, the most profound Optimism is his philosophy.

" Dead are all Gods," he cries, " now we will that
Superman live."*

He implores us to turn our thoughts from a Back-
world, from a Beyond. He points to a task on earth, our
ideal lies in manhood itself, we must aspire to the ex-
cellence of man.

" I conjure you, my brethren, remain faithful to
earth and do not believe those who speak to you of
superterrestrial hopes! Poisoners are they, whether
they know it or not.

" Despisers of life are they, decaying and themselves
poisoned, of whom earth is weary, begone with them !

" Once blasphemy against God was the greatest
blasphemy, but God died, so that this kind of blas-
phemy died also. Now, the most terrible of things is to
blaspheme the earth and to rate the importance of the
unknowable higher than the significance of the earth, "f

Nietzsche teaches us a new will, a will for the im-
provement of our race. Hitherto the ideal of most phil-
osophers had been the happiness of the greatest
number; Nietzsche rebukes those of his predecessors

* Z., "Of the Giving Virtue," IT 3. f Z., Introductory Speech, IT 3.

Superman

89

who held this view, and points out very reasonably
that our aim should be the perfection of society, and
that our morality and religion, if we have any, should
be calculated to achieve that end.

" A new will I teach men: to will that way that man
hath gone blindly and to call it good and no longer to
slink aside from it like the sickly and the dying.*

" The most careful ask to-day: ' How is man pre-
served? ' But Zarathustra asketh as the only and first
one: ' How is man surpassed? 'f

" All beings [in your genealogical ladder] have
created something beyond themselves, and are ye
going to be the ebb of this great tide?

" Behold, I teach you Superman! "J

The word " Superman," " Uebermensch," and the
notion underlying it, were not quite new, when they
appeared in Nietzsche's teaching. Novalis, Heine,
Holderlin, Goethe, and others, had already made use of
the word, while Wilhelm Jordan, in his song entitled
" Die Nibelunge," and Madame Ackermann, in a short
and brilliant poem, " La Nature a 1'Homme/' written
in 1876, are among the most striking examples of those
in whom the notion of a superior being's superseding
man, was a cherished ideal.

In addition to these, we have good grounds for sup-
posing that even Charles Kingsley " believed that man,
as we know him, is by no means the highest creature
that will be evolved ";§ but whether he expresses the

* Z., "Of Back-Wcrldsmen." f Z., " Of Higher Man," IT 3.
X Z., Intro. Speech, IT 3.

§ Herbert Spencer's Autobiography, Vol. I. p. 408.

9o

Superman

idea anywhere in his works, I am afraid I am incom-
petent to say.

It is Nietzsche's undeniable merit, however, as Dr
Alexander Tille observes, to have led this new moral
ideal to a complete victory.

Nietzsche puts the question to us very pointedly. He
asks us what right we have, in the face of the Evolution
Hypothesis, to regard ourselves as the summum bonutn
of humanity. Has Development come to a standstill
with us? No, that is impossible. But there is such a
thing as retrograde development ; there is an ascending
and a descending line of life ; are we certain which line
our race is following?

" Mankind does not manifest a development to the
better, the stronger, or the higher in the manner in
which it has at present believed. ' Progress ' is merely a
modern idea, i.e. a false idea. The European of the
present day is, in worth, far below the European of the
Renaissance; onward development (progress, as it is
understood to-day) is by no means, by any necessity,
elevating, enhancing, strengthening."*

The law that " the fittest " survive in a given en-
vironment, does not by any means imply that the
stronger or the better will survive, and our authorities
for this apparently heterodox doctrine are no less than
Prof. Huxley and Herbert Spencer, f I say " heterodox
doctrine," because I am speaking popularly, and be-
cause I know that a very large number of people (the

* C.W., p. 243, IT 4.

f See also George J. Romanes' paper on "Darwin's Latest
Critics," Nineteenth Century, May 1890.

Superman

91

late Dr James Martineau was among them), who have
not gone below the surface of the Evolution Hypothe-
sis, believe most fervently that the survival of the
fittest must mean the survival of the better and
stronger. But perhaps it would be as well to make the
matter quite clear by referring to Herbert Spencer's
and Huxley's actual words.

The former tells us in Vol. I. p. 379 of his Collected
Essays, where he is replying to an attack made by Dr
Martineau, upon the hypothesis of General Evolution : —

" . . . The law is not the survival of the ' better ' or
the ' stronger,' if we give to those words anything like
their ordinary meaning. It is the survival of those which
are constitutionally fittest to thrive under the condi-
tions in which they are placed; and very often that
which, humanly speaking, is inferiority, causes the sur-
vival. Superiority, whether in size, strength, activity or
sagacity is, other things equal, at the cost of diminished
fertility; and where the life led by a species does not
demand these higher attributes, the species profits by
decrease of them, and accompanying increase of fer-
tility. This is the reason why there occur so many cases
of retrograde metamorphosis — this is the reason why
parasites, internal and external, are so commonly de-
graded forms of higher types. Survival of the * better '
does not cover these cases, though survival of the
' fittest ' does ; and, as I am responsible for the phrase,
I suppose I am competent to say the word ' fittest '
was chosen for this reason. When it is remembered that
these cases outnumber all others — it will be seen that

92

Superman

the expression ' survivorship of the better ' is wholly
inappropriate."

And now turning to Professor Huxley's Romanes
Lecture, we find these words: " there is another fal-
lacy which appears to me to pervade the so-called
' ethics of evolution.' It is the notion that because, on
the whole, animals and plants have advanced in per-
fection of organisation by means of the struggle for exist-
ence and the consequent 'survival of the fittest,' there-
fore men in Society, men as ethical beings, must look to
the same process to help them towards perfection. I sus-
pect that this fallacy has arisen out of the unfortunate
ambiguity of the phrase ' survival of the fittest.' "*

Now what implied fact is common to the three
passages I have just quoted from Nietzsche, Spencer
and Huxley respectively ? Nietzsche says : —

" Progress is by no means, by any necessity, elevat-
ing, enhancing, strengthening." Spencer says, " the
survival of the fittest under the conditions in which
they are placed, does not by any means necessarily
signify that the better and the stronger will survive,"
and Huxley tells us, we look in vain to the struggle for
existence, and the consequent survival of the fittest, to
help us towards perfection.

Is it not quite clear from these three statements that
the environment is the determining factor? If the en-
vironment is best met by mean, emasculated, puny and
rickety beings, it follows that those men will be the

* See the Romanes Lecture, " Evolution and Ethics," by T. H.
Huxley, Ed. 1903, p. 32.

Superman 03

fittest to survive who are mean, emasculated, puny
and rickety.

The parasites in all their loathsomeness, we are told,
are examples of the survival of the fittest, but were not
those creatures much nobler, from which they were
derived, and who unlike them were overcome in the
struggle for existence? Is this point quite clear? Is it
quite understood, that we may be the " fittest " and
yet still degenerate, provided our environment be such
that only degenerate beings may survive in it ?

Nietzsche points to the moral inexorably. He shows
k us that our environment is not conducing to an eleva-
/ tion of man; on the contrary, the man who survives
to-day, that is to say the average man who is happy
and almost adapted to-day, must have qualities which
promise nothing for the future of his race, except its
belittlement. In the modern man, Nietzsche sees a sort
of " Tomlinson " — Mr Rudyard Kipling's famous crea-
tion in the " Barrack-room Ballads " : — and, writing in
very much the same spirit as that in which " the sub-
lime Longinus " wrote in the third century a.d., and
actuated by similar motives; at a time, too, when
Europe seemed to be showing the same symptoms of
degeneracy which his great Greek predecessor saw in
his contemporaries of the Roman Empire, Nietzsche
denounces and condemns " the pigmies " with whom,
he says, he is " fatally contemporaneous "; he cannot
regard them as the crowning glory of Evolution, and,
with the words Mme. Ackermann put into Nature's
mouth, he might well have sung to man : —

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Superman

" Non, tu n'es pas mon but, non, tu n'es ma borne.
A te franchir deja je songe en te creant ;
Je ne viens pas du fond de l'eternite morne
Pour n'aboutir qu'a ton neant.

"Toi meme qui te crois la couronne et le faite
Du monument divin qui n'est point acheve,
Homme, qui n'es au fond que l'ebauche imparfaite
Du chef-d'oeuvre que j'ai reve,

'* A ton tour, a ton heure, il faut que tu perisses.
Ah ! ton orgueuil a beau s'indigner et souffrir,
Tu ne seras jamais dans mes mains creatrices
Que de l'argile a repetrir."*

With terrible earnestness, Nietzsche exclaims : —
" I teach you the Superman. Man is a something

that must be surpassed. What have ye done to surpass

him? "f

Like the true Evolutionist that he was, Nietzsche
would have us alter our environment; he would make it
harder for us.

We are in the dangerous position of being, to a cer-
tain extent, able to create our own environment. This
is the great temptation, the greatest temptation, per-
haps, man has ever had — the temptation of making life
too easy for himself, before he is sure that his unex-
hausted powers do not render it imperative that he
should aim at a still higher development. The Hedon-
istic schoolboy who creeps like a snail unwillingly to
school, does not know that there are latent powers in
him, which it is the business of his education to draw
out ; consequently, his superiors, who know this, force

* See Petite Bibliothequc Littiraire : Oeuvres de A/me. Acker-
maun, Poesies. t Z., "Intro. Speech," H 3.

Superman

95

him to adopt the less pleasant course, and to work. But
we who know, who have no excuse for our Hedonism,
who have, rather, every reason to believe that Super-
man is within our power ; we have but one course, any
other means that we are deliberately shirking our work
and blinding ourselves to our duty.

Let us try to rid ourselves of the superstition that
lamp-posts have grown in the street, where morals are
concerned. Let us take our stand Beyond Good and
Evil. The truth in Morality, like the truth in every-
thing else what does it mean to Nietzsche? It is this
way he replies: — "Truth to me is what elevates
man! "*

" Over ye virtuous, my beauty laughed to-day. And
thus came its voice unto me : ' They wish to be paid in
addition! '

" Ye wish to be paid in addition, ye virtuous!

" Ye wish reward for virtue, heaven for earths, and
eternity for your to-day?

" And now ye are angry at my teaching that there is
no rewarder nor pay-master.

" Nay I do not even teach that virtue is its own
reward.

" Ye love your virtue as the mother does her child;
but did anybody ever hear of a mother wishing to be
paid for her love ?

" It is your dearest self, your virtue. . . .

" But, to be sure, there are men who call the agony

* Nietzsche's Complete Works, published by Naumann, Vol.
XV. p. 153.

96

Superman

under the whip virtue; and ye have hearkened too much
unto their crying.

" And there are others who call the stultification of
their vices virtue.

..." Others who walk about heavily and creaking
like waggons carrying stones down hill, talk much of
dignity and virtue, — their skid they call virtue.

" And there are others who are wound up like every-
day watches ; they go on ticking and wish that ticking
to be called a virtue.

" Verily, these are mine entertainments. Wherever I
find such watches, I shall wind them up with my mock-
ing ; and they shall even click at that.

" And again there are others who sit in their mud-
baths [in their ruts] and thus speak out of their bul-
rushes : ' Virtue — that meaneth to sit still in the mud-
bath.'

" We bite nobody, and go out of the way of him who
seeketh to bite ; and in all things we have the opinions
we are given.

" And in this way almost all believe they share in
virtue. At any rate every body would have himself to be
an expert as to ' good and evil.'

" Zarathustra hath not come to say unto all these
liars and fools : ' What know ye of virtue ! What could
ye know of virtue ! '

" But that ye, my friends, may become weary of the
old words which ye have heard from fools and liars."*

The modern European, this " gregarious animal,"

* Z., "Of the Virtuous."

Superman

97

this " ludicrous species," this " something obliging,
sickly " and " mediocre,"— this modern European; a
man of Progress and of " modern ideas," the fittest
surviving, because he is small and debased and bereft
of all nobility: this man fills Nietzsche with the gravest
misgiving. He cannot think without terror of the indi-
vidual that will ultimately be the fittest to survive in
the conditions which we have created for ourselves, and
to which we may yet become adapted, led thereto by a
Hedonistic philosophy. Something tame, soft and sensi-
tive, something harmless with a keen but timid " eye to
the main chance," some abortion of man it will be;
Nietzsche sees the day coming and its approach is only
made the more probable, seeing that it is taking place
under the cover of such veneering terms as Progress,
Modernity, " equality before God," etc. . . .

With all the energy of his being, Nietzsche raises his
voice against this degeneration of man; he calls to us
/K earnestly to transvalue our values and change our con-
ditions, that another kind of creature may survive in
the " struggle for power."

" I teach you Superman. Man is something that
must be surpassed. What have ye done to surpass
him?

" What is the ape unto man? A laughing-stock, a
thing of shame. Man shall be the same for Superman, a
laughing-stock, a thing of shame.

" Ye have made your way from worm to man and
much within you is still worm.

" He who is the wisest among you is but a hidden

G

Superman

mutiny and a hybrid of plant and ghost. But, do I order
you to become ghosts or plants ?

" Behold, I teach you Superman! "*

But Superman must take a very heavy load upon
his shoulders; a load of filth mostly; for, during our
tenancy of the World, we have not helped to make it
spick-and-span. He will have to have a healthy
stomach too, this higher individual, that it may not
turn when he looks back and contemplates our filthi-
ness; when he looks back and tries to bury our filthi-
ness!

" Verily a muddy stream is man. One must be at
least a sea to be able to absorb a muddy stream without
becoming unclean.

" Behold, I teach you Superman: he is that sea, in
him your great contempt can sink.

" Where is the lightning to lick you with its tongue?
Where is that insanity with which ye ought to be in-
oculated?

" Behold, I teach you Superman: he is that light-
ning, he is that insanity." f

Nietzsche perceived " all that could still be made out
of man, through a favourable accumulation and aug-
mentation of human powers and arrangements; " he
knew " how unexhausted man still is for the greatest
possibilities, and how often in the past, the type man
has stood at mysterious and dangerous crossways, and
has launched forth upon the right or the wrong road,
impelled merely by a whim, or by a hint from the giant
* Z,, "Int. Speech," IF 3. f Ibid., IT 3.

Superman

99

' Chance.' " He knew what trifling obstacles have often
shattered " promising developments of the highest
rank," and owing to what quibbles, saviours of man-
kind have often been sacrificed. " The universal de-
generacy of mankind," he adds, " to the level of the
' man of the future ' — as idealised by the Socialistic
fools and shallow-pates — this degeneracy and dwarfing
of man to an absolutely gregarious animal (or as they
call it, to a man of ' free society,') this brutalising of
man into a pigmy with equal rights and claims, is
undoubtedly possible! He who has thought out this
possibility to its ultimate conclusions, knows another
loathing unknown to the rest of mankind, and perhaps
also, a new mission! "*

But disciples of Nietzsche may ask, who is this
Superman ? What is he like ? How are we to picture this
ideal after which we are to strive? Nietzsche cannot
hope to describe and does not attempt to give us, any
definite image of the Superman. He is to be an evolu-
tion of the higher men of the present day, he is a pro-
phecy that Nietzsche bade the world strive to realise,
he is a promise which Nietzsche exhorted us to keep for
him.

How could he describe a development not yet
reached ? Here and there in his works we get glimpses of
what Superman was to his imagination, and, by an-
alogy of the past, he certainly could claim to form some
rough sort of notion of the kind of being his table of
morals and his principles of Sociology would rear. An
* G.E., pp. 130, 131.

100

Superman

excellent and tentative analysis of his forerunner's
necessary attributes, which I regret to say I cannot
quote here, occurs in the Winter Number 1906 of Mr
Thomas Common's brilliant little Quarterly, The Good
^ European Point of View. In any case, we may say that
the Superman's first virtues must be uprightness and
truthfulness; he must be courageous to the point of
hardness, and his giving, if he give at all, his charity, if
he be charitable, must not be the outcome of pity, but
the consequences of an impulse generated by a super-
abundance of power.

Gifted with a sublime intellect,* and free — free in the
sense that he have the Will to be responsible for him-
self f — he will be able to rule, not because he will but
because he must,} he will be possessed of the " genius of
the heart, which imposes silence and attention on
everything loud and self-conceited, which smooths
rough souls and makes them taste a new longing — to lie
placid as a mirror that the deep heavens may be re-
flected in them ; — the genius of the heart, which teaches
the clumsy and too hasty hand to hesitate and to grasp
more delicately ; which scents the hidden and forgotten
treasure, the drop of goodness and sweet spirituality
under thick dark ice, and is a divining-rod for every
grain of gold, long buried and imprisoned in mud and
sand; the genius of the heart, from contact with which
everyone goes away richer; not favoured or surprised,
not as though gratified and oppressed by the good
things of others ; but richer in himself, newer than be-

* C.W., p. 340. f Ibid., p. 202. X Ibid., p. 341.

Superman

ioi

fore, broken up, blown up, and sounded by a thawing
wind; more uncertain perhaps, more delicate, more
fragile, more bruised, but full of hopes which as yet
lack names, full of a new will and current, full of a new
ill-will and counter current."*

This possible demi-god, leading men because he is a
leader, and followed by men loyally, without a murmur
of " why " or " how," because they cheerfully acknow-
ledge, not only that some are born to follow, but that
unlimited confidence is the highest form of reverence
for one who deserves reverence at all ; this knight of in-
tellect and will, regarding the interests, the true in-
terests, of his fellows, as more sacred than his own, and
determined that errors of thought and judgment will
no more be allowed to return, in order, for the thou-
sandth time, to botch the figure " Man "; this " world-
approving, exuberant and vivacious man, who has not
only learnt to compromise and arrange with that which
was and is, but wishes to have it again, as it was and is,
for all eternity insatiably calling da capo, not only to
himself, but to the whole piece and play ":f this, if I
am not mistaken, is a faint forecast of Nietzsche's
Superman; it was with this ideal in his thoughts that
he called our present state the momentous Noon — the
great Mid-day of man; it was for this belief that he
would have us live and die.

Naturally, he looks upon us as but very remote steps
to this ideal; but he conjures us not to think meanly of
our position and its heavy responsibility.

* G.E., pp. 260, 261. f /did., p. 74.

102

Superman

" Man is a rope slung between animal and Superman,
— a rope over an abyss.

" A dangerous crossing, a dangerous half-way
station, a dangerous looking backward, a dangerous
shivering and halting.

" What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not
a goal : what can be loved in man is that he is a transi-
tion and a destruction.*

" It is time for man to mark out his goal. It is time
for man to plant the germ of his highest hope.

" His soil is still rich enough for that purpose. But
one day that soil will be impoverished and tame, no
high tree being any longer able to grow from it."f

He was only too well aware of the impossibility of
appealing to the many with a doctrine such as this.
" They understand me not," he says, " I am not the
mouth for these ears." Hedonism is far more to their
taste, much more simple, and above all, much more
pregnant with immediate advantages.

Nietzsche professes to appeal to those deep ones,
whose ears are delicate enough to hear a jarring note in
the sensational music of modern progress ; to those who
are discerning enough to guess at the humbug under-
lying the tinsel of " modern ideas "; in short he would
fain appeal to those deep and refined ones, who con-
stitute the few and the select, and who already know,
in their innermost hearts, that all is not above-board
with man.

" A thousand paths there are which have never yet
* Z., " Int. Speech," H 4. t Ibid., H 4, 5.

Superman

103

been walked, a thousand salubrities and hidden islands
of life. Unexhausted and undiscovered, are still man
and man's world.

" Awake and listen, ye lonely ones! From the future
winds are coming with a gentle beating of wings, and
there cometh good tidings for fine ears.

" Ye lonely ones of to-day, ye who stand apart, ye1
shall one day be a people : from you who have chosen
yourselves, a chosen people shall arrive: and from it
Superman.

" Verily, a place of healing shall earth become! And
already a new odour lieth around it, an odour which
bringeth salvation — and a new hope.*

" Never yet Superman existed. I have seen them,
both naked, the greatest and the smallest man.

" Much too like are they still unto each other. Verily
even the greatest one I found to be — much too
human, "f

To men Nietzsche cried: " Superman is the signific-
ance of this earth. Your will shall say : Superman shall
be the significance of this earth. "J

To women, he said: " Let a ray of starlight shine in
your love ! Let your hope be : ' Would that I might give
birth to Superman! ' "§

And in this last passage, where Nietzsche tells us in a
simile, what he was and how we are to regard him, we
get in a poetical form his concept of his mission.

" I love all those who are like heavy drops falling one

* " Of the Giving Virtue," If 2. f Z., "Of Priests."

JZ. "Int. Speech," IT 3. § Z., •« Of Little Women, Old & Young."

104

Superman

by one from the dark cloud lowering over men: they
announce the coming of the lightning and perish in the
act.

" Behold, I am an announcer of the lightning and a
heavy drop from the clouds : that lightning's name is,
Superman."*

* Z., "Int. Speech," IT 4.

THE END OF LECTURE II.

Ill

The Transvaluation of all Values

In the two preceding lectures, I attempted to deal with
Nietzsche's newness — his originality, — first in regard to
the question of modern European morality, secondly in
regard to his ideal of man. Much that you heard must
have seemed new, even to outlandishness — even to
eccentricity — to you. Now, however, I am approaching
a side of his philosophy, the " Transvaluation of all
Values," which promises, already by its very title, to
transcend even the foregoing in novelty and originality.

In fact, it is not without great diffidence that one can
venture to treat of this subject at all in a lecture. The
views I have to lay before you will, at first, seem topsy-
turvy.

One has to get acclimatised, even to new and strange
thought.

But, so radically will these thoughts probably sub-
vert your most deeply-cherished beliefs, that to hear
them for the first time may mean to be shocked, to be
offended, or even to be wounded, and there where you
are most vulnerable.

In my last lecture, you heard what Nietzsche said of
new music, new words, new effects of colour; you heard

105

io6 The Transvaluation

that he declares them hostile to the senses; " We hear
new music badly," he says. Need I point the moral?

What you are going to hear under the title, " Trans-
valuation of all Values," will be new music to you; not
alone new music, but the instrument upon which it will
be played, will be strange also.

Nietzsche was a new human instrument. A costly one
whose sad end was proof enough of his fragility. No one
who has studied his works deeply, can doubt that
Nietzsche's breakdown was anything more than the
snap of an organisation which was too highly strung
for the conditions in which it lived.

He was a new instrument; he had eyes and ears for
subtleties which most eyes and ears are too coarse for,
nowadays. The music he gives us is new music; let us
therefore be prepared to " hear it badly," remembering,
however, to seek the fault in the proper quarter.

With this warning, I hope to secure you from that
indignation and impatience which may blind you to the
true merits of the views I now wish to present to you.
The way I present them, I know to be full of short-
comings ; but let this fact serve but as a further reason
urging you to turn to his works themselves, for a better
knowledge of their message.

No better opening could be chosen for this paper
however, than that made by Nietzsche, himself, in the
first book of the Transvaluation. Perhaps only too well
aware of the reception his doctrine would meet with, he
there writes in the following strain: —

" This book belongs to the select few. Perhaps even

of all Values

107

none of them yet live. They may be those who under-
stand my Zarathustra: ... It is only the day after
to-morrow that belongs to me. Some are born pos-
thumously:

" The conditions under which a person understands
me, and then necessarily understands, — I know them
only too accurately. He must be honest in intellectual
matters even to sternness, in order even to endure my
seriousness, my passion. ... He must have become in-
different, he must never ask whether truth is profitable
or becomes a calamity to him. A predilection of robust-
ness for questions for which, at present, no one has the
courage; the courage for the forbidden; the predeter-
mination for the labyrinth. New ears for new music.
New eyes for the most distant. A new conscience for
truths which have hitherto remained dumb. . . . Well
then ! Those alone are my readers, my right readers, my
predetermined readers : of what account are the rest? "*

A thinker who writes in this way expects to be mis-
interpreted ; indeed he deliberately courts misinterpre-
tation. For he knows that it is one thing to understand,
and something quite different to endure what one un-
derstands. " Every deep thinker," he tells us, "is more
afraid of being understood than of being misunderstood.
The latter perhaps wounds his vanity; but the former
wounds his heart, his sympathy, which always says : —
1 Ah, would you also have as hard a time as I have? ' "f

We may ask what it was that gave Nietzsche a hard
time. True, he led a lonely life, — the life of an ascetic;
* C.W., pp. 239, 240. f G.E., p. 258.

108 The Transvaluation

he was also an invalid, and, to a certain extent an out-
cast against whom almost every hand was raised; but
if we look into these facts concerning him, we find that
they are rather the symptoms than the cause of his un-
happiness. The cause of this unhappiness was in reality
Nietzsche himself — the particular way in which he was
constituted. His only alternative was to live alone, it
was a foregone conclusion that he would be an invalid,
and his contemporaries were compelled to raise their
hands against him; simply because Nietzsche had no
company, could find no health and possessed no real
contemporaries in a world into which he had come, per-
haps two or three centuries before his time.

Nietzsche was wretched because he was ill-adapted
to his environment, he was an anchorite because he
never succeeded in finding the friend, the equal, who
could be company for him, — in the language of the
biologist who could make him feel in harmony with his
surroundings.

At the end of a very beautiful poem, entitled " From
Lofty Mountains," he tells us that this actually was the
case.

" O noon of life ! A second youthful land !
Fair summer station !
O restless bliss in watchful expectation : —
For friends I wait — both day and night attend, —
For the new friends ! Oh, come ! The time's at hand !

"This '•ong is o'er, — the longings' sweet refrain
Ceased with good reason :
By charmer's spell, the friend at the right season,
The noonday friend — but why should I explain —
It was at noon when one was changed to twain. . . •

of all Values

109

"We celebrate, now sure of conquering might,
The grandest lustra : —
The guest of guests arrived, friend Zarathustra !
The world now smiles, rent is the veil of night —
And marriage comes for darkness and for light." ... *

Could any lines be more irresistibly poignant? After
having sought the friend year in, year out, Zarathustra
— his own creation, is the only guest he can tolerate at
his table!

Elsewhere, Nietzsche tries to explain the nature of
his sufferings, and we see perhaps more clearly still,
that our view of the case is only too probable.

He tells us he suffered from man.

" Ye do not yet suffer enough! " he declares, apos-
trophising " Higher men." " For ye suffer from your-
selves, ye have never suffered from man. Ye would lie,
did ye say otherwise ! None of you suffereth from what
I have suffered, "f

Nietzsche, by virtue of the very ill-adaptedness which
was his bane, was practically in the position of a spec-
tator at a play. He saw man as a looker-on sees all
things, that is to say, he saw most of the game.

But what time have we nowadays to think of man?

We think we propitiate the imaginary spirit of our
race, from time to time, when we fling some of our
victuals to the cripples, the good-for-nothings and the
diseased that throng our neighbourhood; but mankind
in general? — man as a species? Who has time to think
of this question? Who has even a wish to think of this
question?

* G.E., pp. 267, 268. f Z., " Of Higher Man," IT 6.

no The Transvalu ation

In the midst of all our bustle and hurry! our greed
for comfort, our desire, ever to be on the safe side,
Nietzsche arises like a warning figure of destiny and
bids us look ahead. An artist with a very distinct taste
of his own, his object is not so much to impose his taste
upon us, as to make us feel sure that we are exercising
our taste.

He leaves us in no doubt as to what we are ; gives us
a dazzling picture of what we might be, and exhorts us
J to accept his ideal or make another of our own.

With passionate emphasis he cries: — the "Earth
hath a skin, and that skin hath diseases. One of these
diseases, for example, is called ' man.' "*

For this passion, for this emphasis, Nietzsche has
been scorned. We, of modern Europe, have given up
talking in this way. Even in our arguments, the hyper-
sensitive and the lovers of peace and smug ease,
whisper to us, not on any account to be personal. In-
deed, so suspicious have we become of him whose heart
is in his convictions or his ideas, and who therefore
speaks with vehemence, that we have grown milder,
even than the mildest man in history — the Founder of
Christianity. Christ certainly said: " Whosoever shall
smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other
also," but when in the presence of his most rancorous
enemies, he, too, did not refrain from venting his
passion; as witness his attack on the money-changers.

Nietzsche is nothing if not vehement in his appeal to
us, and in England, above all, therefore, we are inclined

♦ Z., M Of Great Events."

of all Values

hi

to purse our lips. Even such an authority in criticism,
as Professor Saintsbury, cannot help taking exception to
Nietzsche's " reckless, uncontrolled, uncontrollable flux
and reflux of mood and temper,"* and the learned critic
more than once alludes, with grave expressions of fear
and commiseration to a taint of dementedness,f which,
in his opinion, most certainly peeps out of the pages of
the German philosopher's works. How very easy such
criticism is; how simple it is to point to madness in a
man's work, when we have been told that he died in-
sanely

To be philosophical at all, the prerequisite, hitherto,
has been tediousness, longwindedness, dryness, —
anaemia! In men whose writings savour of these things,
in our Kants, our J. S. Mills, our Sidgwicks, we have
faith.

Now Nietzsche is a man who wrote with his blood,
who made philosophy as palpitatingly interesting as
the most thrilling romance, who himself said, he had no
particular wish to be read at present, whose ambition
was to create " things on which time might vainly try
its teeth, "§ and who, as we have already seen, endea-
voured to " say in ten sentences what everyone else
says in a whole book, — what everyone else does not say
in a whole book."||

At this man, the orthodox and lovers of tradition,

* A History of Criticism, Vol. III. p. 586.
t Ibid., pp. 584, 585, 586.

% On this point see Raoul Richter : Friedrich Nietzsche, Sein
Leben und sein Werk, pp. 79-86.

§ C.W., p. 221. || Ibid.

112

The Transvaluation

with Professor Pringle Pattison in the van, immedi-
ately foam with indignation ; he is new music to them,
he is not tedious ; — they are at sea ! And these people
who worship dry land, dry books and dry ideas, insist
on it, that they must be bored when reading philosophy,
otherwise the self-castigating element in their studies,
which is their measure of the latter's depth, is felt to be
entirely wanting.

" Do not forget," says Nietzsche, " the higher we
soar, the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly."*

This is not an aphorism for the sake of an aphorism, it
is a thought expressing the experience of his whole life.

His eyes were constantly upon his fellows ; mankind
becomes self-conscious, — blushes even, when reading
his works. The steady, critical gaze is sometimes too
piercing; — hence, perhaps, the hatred he has roused
and the opposition he has provoked.

" Towards my goal I struggle, mine own way I go, I
shall overleap those who hesitate and delay. Let my
way be their destruction, "f

" I am a railing alongside the stream; whoever is able
to seize me, may seize me. Your crutch however I am
not."t

Nietzsche was a critic, above all. Even Professor
Saintsbury admires him in a lukewarm fashion in this
capacity. Nietzsche bids us look around. He criticises
the whole of modern culture, and the keynote of his in-
dictment is, that we are all decadent. We have seen

* D.D., p. 386. t Z., " Int. Speech," IT 9.

X Z., "Of the Pale Criminal."

of all Values

"3

that the survival of the fittest does not by any means
signify the survival of the more desirable or even toler-
able, if we give to these words anything like their
ordinary meanings. Given the necessary conditions, and
the survival of the fittest might signify the survival of
the meanest, most abject and most contemptible type,
according to our present notions.

We create our conditions by means of our values of J
Good and Evil. Now are the conditions we have created
leading to a goal which would answer to our present
acceptation of what is dignified or worthy of our inherit-
ance? Is it our taste that the man of the future be
nobler, better-constituted, and stronger than he is at
present, or that he be mean, deformed — ignoble ?

Nietzsche assures us that decadence is the only pos-
sible, ultimate end of our present values. In fact he
already sees decadence in a hundred different mani-
festations about us to-day, and he implores us to alter
our values, before it is too late. " It is time for man to
mark out his goal. It is time for man to plant the germ
of his highest hope.

" His soil is still rich enough for that purpose."*

" Not only the reason of millenniums — but also their
madness breaketh out in us. Dangerous it is to be an
heir."t

But, how, you may ask, are we to determine new

values ? As we saw in my first paper, Nietzsche gives us

the key. He says, not the prevalence of a certain moral

principle is of importance in estimating its worth; but

* Z., " Int. Speech," IT 5. f Z., "Of the Giving Virtue," II 2.
H

ii4 The Transvaluation

its origin. Let that be our rule throughout our investi-
gation of the values which reign to-day, and it will be
seen, how few may be retained, if our taste happen to
coincide with Nietzsche's.

Morality, in all its forms is merely a means to self-
enhancement and to power. This life is will to power.
But, if we grant this, as we saw in the first paper, we
also grant by implication, that not only the actually
powerful, but also the impotent, the oppressed, the ill-
constituted, the defeated, will struggle for power too.
What did we say would be the result, suppose each of
these classes moralise? Would not the powerful, the
happy, the healthy, the well-constituted, probably posit
health, power, strength, well-constitutedness as
" good " ; and is it not also likely that the impotent, the
weak, the diseased and the ill-constituted would regard
exactly those attributes as evil — as their evil ?

Life means struggle, battle — war. Where it ceases
to be that, its standard falls;* it degenerates. The at-
tacks that life survives, as a rule, leave it stronger. Even,
to-day, we carry on a sort of bloodless war with the
weapons which our professions or trades place in our
hands.

But fight entails exertion and fatigue ; to the weak,
the ill-constituted and the defeated, however, it is un-
bearable fatigue, insufferable exertion. What will they,
therefore, probably regard as an ideal of blessedness?
With their pale hands on their panting breasts, will
they not cry for peace, love, love for one's neighbour;

* G.E., p. 235 et seq.

of all Values

115

yes, even love for one's enemy? Will they not say:
peace is good, love is good, love for one's neighbour is
good ; yes, even love for one's enemy is good? Is not this
morality distinctly redolent of the weary of the fight,
of the wounded of the fight, of the incapable of the
fight ? Will not health, happiness, power, prosperity, be
regarded by them with revengeful eyes?

Let this suffice as introduction. Let it suffice to show
the sound psychological basis upon which Nietzsche
builds his two moralities: the master- and the slave-
morality, and let us be prepared for the somewhat
heterodox conclusions which an admission of these
views carries with it.

For, however eager we may be to follow Nietzsche,
we may find ourselves so mercilessly assailed by his
doctrines, and called upon at every turn to relinquish
so many of our most cherished ideals, that we must not
be surprised to find ourselves hesitating at first, even
to listen — even to see clearly — even to think fairly.

" Verily, I have taken from you an hundred words
and the dearest playthings of your virtue ; and now ye
are angry with me as children are.

" They played on the seashore, — then came a wave
and swept all their toys away into the depths : now they
cry.

" But the same wave shall bring them new play-
things and spread before them new coloured shells.

"Thus they will be comforted; and like them, ye
also, my friends, shall have your comfort and new-
coloured shells.

n6 The Transvaluation

" Thus Spake Zarathustra."*
• ••••••

Nietzsche did not allow his mother ever to peep into
one of his books. The old lady died without having read
a line of her son's philosophical writings. f Was he going
to let his mother have as hard a time of it as he had?
Apparently not. He left his mother with her illusions
concerning life. She had fulfilled her task on earth; her
life was an already accomplished one when he began to
write; why should he disturb her calm serenity? Why
embitter her against her world seeing that she had but
her autumn to spend in it ?

Nietzsche does not appeal to those whose life-task is
accomplished. He quite well realises that few men have
the courage, even if they had the conviction, to turn
upon their past selves, and recant all they have said and
done. It is vain to expect it of them — more particularly
in a world which still obstinately regards any revulsion
of feeling or change of opinion as a sign of weakness, t

Nietzsche appeals to the young; to those who have
their lives before them. His speech on marriage in Thus
Spake Zarathustra is perhaps the finest thing on the
subject in the whole of the world's literature. He ele-
vates marriage, not virtually, but actually, to the most
sacred place among human institutions. He regards the
married couple as pledges for the future of humanity.

* Z., "Of the Virtuous."

t Das Nietzsche Archiv, Seine Freunde und Feinde, by E.
Foerster-Nietzsche, p. 18.

X In this respect see Professor Saintsbury's concluding words in
his remarks upon Nietzsche, p. 586, Vol. III., History of Criticism.

of all Values

117

The words of St Paul on the subject, which I do not like
even to quote here, revolt him;* to him, marriage is not
a last shift, a faute-de-mieux, this view of it fills him
with disgust ;f for it overlooks the main object of the
institution, which is the pledge for the future of the
human race.

He says rather: —

" Thou art young and wishes t for child and marriage.
But I ask thee: art thou a man who darest to wish for a
child?

" Art thou the victorious one, the self-subduer, the
commander of thy senses, the master of thy virtues?
Thus I ask thee.

" I would that thy victory and freedom were longing
for a child. Thou shalt build living monuments unto thy
victory and liberation.

" Thou shalt build beyond thyself. But first thou
must be built thyself square in body and soul.

" Thou shalt not only have descendants, but these
shall also be thy ascent! Therefore the garden of
marriage may help thee !

" Thirst unto the creator, an arrow and longing for
Superman: say, my brother, is that thy will unto
marriage?

" Holy I call such a will and such a marriage.' '{

* Seeing that St Paul, with the words referred to, was speaking
to men (the Corinthians) who were undeniably base and depraved,
perhaps it is unfair to regard his attitude as the essentially Christian
attitude towards marriage. The reader is therefore begged to refer
to the Rituah Romanum, and more particularly to the Church of
England Book of Common Prayer.

f C.W., pp. 336, 337. % Z., "Of Child and Marriage."

n8 The Transvaluation

In what religion can similar words be found con-
cerning the holy estate of matrimony?

Nietzsche appeals to the young and tells them the
nature of modern decadence. He points to it every-
where, and through them hopes to overcome it. He
writes in the Antichrist : —

" The problem I here put, is not what is to replace
mankind in the chain of beings (man is an end), but
what type of man we are to cultivate, we are to will, as
the more valuable, the worthy of life, the more certain
of the future.

" This more valuable type has often enough existed
already; but as a happy accident, as an exception,
never as willed. It has rather just been the most feared,
it has hitherto been almost the terror, the reverse has
been willed, cultivated, attained ; the domestic animal,
the herding animal, the sickly animal man — the
Christian."*

Nietzsche sees two lines of life, the ascending and the
descending. After a conscientious investigation of life
in the civilised world, he arrives at the inevitable con-
clusion, that the descending line is almost the rule, and
he makes no effort at concealment concerning his belief
as to the causes which are at work effecting this state
of affairs.

He tells us the morality of the weak, the ill-consti-
tuted and the slaves, is gaining ascendency over other
and nobler moralities.

Our conditions are determined by our values, Nietz-
* C.W., p. 242.

of all Values

119

sche strikes at these. He assures us that our values are
precisely what we must alter. If man is to be a being
worthy of respect at all in time to come, if he is not to
be a semi-sick, listless animal, grunting and sweating
under a weary life, as under a disease, then we must
alter our ideals ; if we will have another kind of man, if
our taste is a man who is health, who is happiness and
strength, and whose aspect will not make us entertain
doubts as to the inestimable worth of life; then this
revolution, this arresting of the decadent current of
to-day, this " ascent " (in Nietzsche's sense), is only to
be achieved by a Transvaluation of all values: by a
Transvaluation of all modern values.

The envisaging of this " topsyturvification," as Pro-
fessor Saintsbury calls it, presupposes at least a certain
knowledge of our present values, and this leads us to the
question, par excellence, which Nietzsche answered with
most force, most novelty, and most courage. What are our
present values? The reply is: they are Christian values.

However stoutly we may repudiate any active par-
ticipation in Christian forms and pieties, however con-
scientiously we may disclaim all allegiance to the
religion of pity; the fact nevertheless remains, that in
our morality, in our appreciation of life, the principles
we adopt are Christian principles.

Our concept of " good " to-day, is not the concept of
good with which we fought our way from the beast, it
is a concept of good which has come to us from some
law-giver who, like all law-givers, desired to create a
certain type of man.

120

The Transvaluation

This " good " has to be taught as something bran-
new to little boys, who at first, in spite of heredity, and
before they have the poison of a guilty conscience im-
planted in them, are refractory to it. It is the Christian
concept of good. Let us therefore turn to Christianity.

Before embarking upon this trying undertaking, how-
ever, it would be well to bear in mind what Nietzsche's
position precisely was towards religions in general.

I suppose, no careful reader of his works has ever
doubted, for one instant, that Nietzsche was a pro-
foundly religious man ; for to do so would be to mistake
the whole trend of his thoughts. Indeed, taking re-
ligiousness to mean that attitude of reverence and awe
before the inexorability and beauty of Nature, which is
the salient characteristic of such ancient religions as
that of the Sun-worshippers, Nietzsche's gift and feeling
for it might even be regarded as exceptional, and one
has only to recall his magnificent poem entitled " Be-
fore Sunrise," in Thus Spake Zarathustra, in order to be
convinced of the fact.

In addition to this, however, everywhere in his works
we find the usefulness of religions extolled as a measure
of discipline,* as a step to higher intellectuality, f as a
means to invaluable contentedness,J and, in one place,
we even find that man rebuked who can love any but a
religious woman; while the gift of reverence, which
may be regarded as a factor in the development of all
higher religions, is, according to Nietzsche, a sine-qua-
non of the aristocratic sum of qualities.

* G.E., p. 80. t ibid., p. 81.

X Ibid., p. 81. G.M., pp. 169, 170, 171, 172, 173.

of all Values

121

We cannot therefore say that Nietzsche is anti-religi-
ous. As a matter of fact, he is very far from being so.
But, loyal in everything to his aim, which is the ex-
cellence of man, he divides religions, like moralities,
into classes according to the ideals they bid men strive
after.

Not the legends, nor the questionable promises, nor
the prodigious wonders of religions, are held to be of
importance by him; — but as we might easily have
guessed: their moralities. The morality of a religion isr
that part of it which stamps its whole character, be-
cause it is precisely that part of it which has as itd|
object the creation of a certain type of man. The hopes,
the little fairy stories upon which the warrant for its
hopes are based, and the value of the claim which
religious founders usually make, to having had their
teaching revealed to them supernaturally : — all these
things may be as preposterous and as absurd as can be
imagined, Nietzsche pays no heed to them, and moves
not a finger to expose them. What does concern him,
however, is the kind of man who tends to become para-
mount under the auspices, and owing to the morality,
of a given religion.

If the type be a desirable or a tolerable one, then,
whatever be the absurdities of the religions rearing it,
it is applauded for its taste. If the reverse be the case,
however, no grandeur of rites, nor any exploitation of
logic, can justify the religion in Nietzsche's eyes.

Now, turning to Christianity, let us ask ourselves
what trait it has, which, to an inquirer indifferent as to

122 The Transvaluation

the issue, and partial only to facts, might be regarded
as the most salient trait, as the very nose of the faith
which all believers follow?

Is it not the positing of a beyond in contradistinction
toa" here " to a " this earth " — to life? The denial, the
calumny and the backbiting of this world together
with the eulogy, the great promises of, and the condi-
tions of admittance to, a world to come, every fair
critic must surely regard as the leitmotif of the Gospels
and other books of the New Testament.

" Love not the world, neither the things that are in
the world. If any man loves the world, the love of the
Father is not in him." It cannot be said that the senti-
ment of this text is exceptional in the New Testament.
And again: " He that loveth life, shall lose it: and he
that hateth life in this world shall keep it unto life eter-
nal." Nobody, I presume, will deny that this thought is
the very kernel of Christianity.

And what are we to suppose this loathing of the
world meant? How are we to explain it?

The healthy child romps, the kitten plays delightfully.
Who can watch a healthy child or a kitten at play, and
still maintain that they should hate life in this world?

They both say yea unto life most heartily !

" Unto the pure all things are pure. . . . But, I tell
you," says Nietzsche, " unto the swine, all things are
swine! "

" Therefore the enthusiasts and hypocrites, whose
very heart hangeth down, preach : ' The world itself is
a filthy monster! '

of all Values 123

u For they are all of an unclean mind; in particular
those who have neither quiet nor rest ; unless it be that
they see the world from the back, — those back-
worldsmen! "*

In what class of mind do thoughts of bitterness and
resentment against the world originate? I

Once they have originated, they spread, of course,
like a plague; for we have only to glance around us to-
day in order to see how few are really constituted to
say yea unto life, innocently, heartily and consum-
mately, as the healthy child does. It is, therefore,
merely complicat'ng the problem, to try and support the
mistrust of life and of this world by pointing to those
who, rightly or wrongly, now share it. The only ques-
tion we can put in the hope of obtaining enlighten-
ment is : what kind of mind first gave rise to the mis-
trust? St John and Schopenhauer, Buddha and St Paul:
what influence is at work to make these men deny life ?
That is our problem.

When we hear: " The wretched alone are the good,
the poor, the impotent, the lowly alone are the good;
only the sufferers, the needy, the sick, the ugly are
pious; only they are godly; them alone blessedness
awaits ; — but ye, the proud and potent, ye are for aye
and evermore the wicked, the cruel, the lustful, the in-
satiable, the godless ; ye will also be, to all eternity, the
unblessed, the cursed and the damned! "J When we

* Z., " Of Old and New Tables," IT 14.

t For an interesting suggestion concerning the answer to this
question, see Gibbon's Decline and Fall (Edit. Methuen & Co.,
1896), Vol. II. p. 68. % G.M.. p. 29.

124 The Transvaluation

read: " Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the
kingdom of heaven.

"Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be
comforted.

" Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the
earth (!).

" Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be
called the children of God."

When we read these sentiments, how many sensitive
listeners among us can help pricking their ears for a
sound of the hoarse croak of impotence which is to
follow them? What fine listener amongst us does not
detect the Will to Power of the unfortunate, the weak,
and the ill-constituted, behind these words ? Does this
interpretation require to be substantiated?

Who is likely to say: "It is God that avengeth me.
. . . the Lord avenge me!" Let us ask ourselves honestly
and uprightly, who it is who leaves his vengeance to a
God or to a future time and must posit a hell for his
enemies? A certain kind of man must have done it,
once upon a time, in order to still a rankling hate. Was
it the man who had power to chastise his enemy ? Was
it the conqueror or successful warrior in any walk of
life?

If we have earnestly asked ourselves these questions,
we are nearing enlightenment, we are beginning to
perceive what type of man sought to preserve himself
and even universalise his kind by means of Christian
values.

God had taken many shapes in the minds of men.

of all Values

125

But before he could be reduced to the mellifluous lower-
middle-class deity which St Paul describes in the follow-
ing passage, something must have happened to him;
what was it? Nietzsche's answer is, that a type of men
had appropriated and defined him, who, being in a low
and mean position in life, perforce gave him those
attributes which tended to honour and even to canonise
their condition.

St Paul said to the Corinthians : —

"... Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this
world?

" For after that in the wisdom of God the world by
wisdom knew God, it pleased God by the foolishness of
preaching to save them that believe.

"... Not many wise men after the flesh, not many
mighty, not many noble, are called :

" But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world
to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak
things of the world to confound the things which are
mighty; (!)

" And base things * of the world, and things which
are despised, hath God chosen, yea and things which
are not, to bring to nought things that are."

Is it not perfectly legitimate to inquire to what class
of minds such words appealed, and what part of the
community they were supposed to endow with power?
Nietzsche thinks the question very pertinent, and he
replies, that only the oppressed, the weak, the ill-con-
stituted, or the slaves of any community could have

* to. ayevq really means— the low-born things.

126 The Transvaluation

felt the need of such words. These sentiments of St
Paul are values involving the morality of two thousand
years. What kind of values are they? Are they the
values of a noble, an ascendant, a healthy morality, or
those of a slave, a decadent, an unhealthy morality?

It is clear that no noble or powerful class invented
them ; no such class could have had any use for them.
They appeal to those who are burning with resentment,
to those who are impotent, crippled, diseased, or in any
way physiologically botched, and who are tired and
sick of the sight of the mighty, the happy, the well-
constituted; that is to say, of all those on whom the
future welfare of mankind depends.*

The resenting ones on earth, wrestling with their
weakness, or disease, playfully, as with a friend, were
also parched, as all humanity is, with the thirst for
power. They also wished to universalise their kind. In
their way stood the values of the noble, strong and well
constituted. How could they make their concept of
good and evil universal? That was their problem, and
on its solution depended the attainment to power of the
whole race.

The natural function of the strong is to discharge
their strength. Not passive inactivity, but aggressive
activity is their business.

* Olshausen observes: "The ancient Christians were for the
most part slaves and men of low station ; the whole history of the
expansion of the church is in reality a progressive victory of the
ignorant over the learned, the lowly over the lofty, until the
emperor himself laid down his crown before the cross of Christ."
(Quoted by Henry Alford, D.D., one time Dean of Canterbury.
See his Greek Testament, Vol. II. p. 481.)

of all Values

127

" To demand of strength that it should not manifest
itself as strength, that it should not be a will to over-
power, to subdue, to become master of, that it should
not be a thirst for enemies, resistance, and triumphs, is
as absurd as to demand of weakness that it should
manifest itself as strength."*

But how did the weak, the ill-constituted, and the
physiologically botched regard the matter? To them
the natural discharge of strength on the part of their
superiors in body or mind, was an intolerable persecu-
tion which threatened to jeopardise the universalisa-
tion of their class.

A discharge of strength on the part of a weak man,
amounts to an affectation, it is an effort upon which he
must concentrate the whole of his attention, and, even
so, he does not necessarily succeed in showing strength.
What, therefore, was the very natural conclusion of the
weak man? Is it not clear, after indulging in introspec-
tion, that he must have held all manifestations of
strength to be, not necessary, but voluntary? — Even
on the part of the strong? Must he not have thought
that the strong are at liberty to behave like the weak if
they choose, and that if they do not, since the difference
is voluntary, therefore it must be their deliberate
choice, their fault, — their guilt ?f

It only remained to teach the strong this Machiavel-
lian doctrine, and the position of the weak would be-
come secure.

Nietzsche then proceeds to show us that the weak,

* G.M., p. 44. f Ibid., pp. 45, 46.

i28 TheTransvaluation

believing the strong free to be weak, if they chose, not
only tried to cry " shame " to them for their strength,
but, themselves, began to regard weakness as volun-
tary. Their weakness seemed to them, at last, a per-
formance, not the inevitable outcome of their constitu-
tions, but an act of choice and discernment, for which
their taste, their principles were responsible, and the
chasm between weakness and virtue was thus spanned ;
for the inability to retaliate, to mingle actively with
their fellows, to have any contact with evil, to be im-
patient, proud and unjust, thereby became a thing self-
willed, self-chosen, a deed, a desert.*

For this deliberate and virtuous choice of weakness,
for their exaltation of their great asset — pity, they were
chosen by their God to confound the things which were
mighty. " Free will " was the necessary belief and
instrument of these early weaklings, as it was the
necessary belief of all tamers of the animal — man.

To Nietzsche, as we are now beginning to perceive,
Christianity is the embodiment of all slave values. In
all its principles, he sees protection, shelters, means to
power, for the impotent, the sickly and the oppressed.

But in thus classifying Christianity as a religion
based upon slave-values, Nietzsche once more opens
that much-debated question, which Gibbon refers to
with such a show of deprecation in the famous fifteenth
chapter of the Decline and Fall ; — the question whether
the first Christians were mean and ignorant. For, if it
can be proved that they were, then Nietzsche's conten-
* G.M., pp. 45, 46.

of all Values

129

tion concerning Christianity although it does not rely
on this evidence alone, may, at least, be said to be
partly justified.

Unfortunately, this question, deeply interesting
though it undoubtedly is, involves a discussion of so
many authors' works, that to treat it even with scant
justice, would mean to allot it more space than is here
occupied by the whole of these four lectures, taken
together. When this is borne in mind, and when we also
remember that the solution of the question exacts a
somewhat profound knowledge of the first two centuries
of our era; and that, even then, a certain " cloud " of
uncertainty will still be found to " hang " over the first
age of the church, concealing those facts which are of
the most vital importance to the point at issue ; it will
be seen, that the task of the investigator, is not only
very far from being an easy one, but also that it is
beset with peculiar and inevitable disappointments,
thanks to the freedom with which the various authori-
ties refute and contradict one another in the course of
establishing their own particular beliefs. Now I make
no claim to having investigated this matter ade-
quately, neither do I pretend to possess that knowledge
of ancient history, which would justify me in deciding
arbitrarily either against or for Nietzsche's contention ;
I have therefore placed myself entirely in the hands of
those English, German and French authorities who
seemed to me to have made a conscientious inquiry into
the points which are at issue.

In stating the result of my modest researches, my
1

130 The Transvaluation

object, therefore, will be not so much to establish
Nietzsche's contention, as to show you, that if he is
sinning at all in making it, he is at least sinning in very *
good company.

To begin with, therefore, let it be said at once, that
for Nietzsche's contention that Christian values are
those of a slave, decadent, or resentment-morality,
the evidence from various quarters is exceedingly
strong.

Albeit, no attempt shall be made here to present the
argument in its favour as strongly as possible, because
there seems to be no need to attach such wonderful im-
portance to it, and for reasons which will be given later.
In any case, though, the attitude of some well-known
authorities may prove interesting, and to these it will
now be our business to turn.

Remembering that men of letters and of high society
in Rome, of the second century, either did not know
Christianity, or knew it exceedingly badly, and, there-
fore, that in spite of Tacitus, Suetonius, Juvenal, the
younger Pliny, Plutarch, Lucian, Hadrian and Marcus
Aurelius, our information is comparatively scanty on
the subject, and in any case but for the famous letter
of the younger Pliny, not very important ; if we turn to
the results of modern research, we shall find many
serious attempts at grappling with our problem.

Taking Gibbon first, how many, who have read his
fifteenth chapter of the Decline and Fall, have found
any reason to doubt what his attitude really was regard-
ing the question ? Beneath his irony we do indeed read

of all Values

131

dislike, and his sneers rather make us halt with surprise,
seeing that he set out with the view of making " a
candid but rational inquiry." But setting aside the
tone in which he writes, a tone which, as Mr Bury
points out, would have been altered by force of circum-
stances, had he been writing in our own time, in which
" a wide diffusion of unobtrusive scepticism among
educated people . . . seems to render offensive warfare
superfluous,"* does anyone suppose that his attitude
towards the single question of the alleged low status of
early Christians would have altered? We shall see that
theopinionof other writers, andeven, of Mr Bury himself,
do not justify our assuming this. Allowing, therefore,
as fully as we can, for the peculiar influences and de-
ficiencies of the time in which he wrote, we still cannot
entirely overlook, in an historian like Gibbon, the value
to Nietzsche's contention, of such passages as those, in
which he refers to the " humble and obscure followers
of Christ, "j* or to the " pusillanimous sentiments of the
new sect, "J or in which he explains the readiness of
early Christians to believe in a beyond or a back-world,
in words very similar to Nietzsche's.§

Turning to Merivale we certainly meet with a valiant
attempt to elevate the status of primitive Christians ;
but the best even he can do for them, is to raise them

* Introduction to Gibbon's Decline and Fall (Methuen & Co.,
1896), Vol. I.

f Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Methuen & Co. 1896),
Vol. II. pp. 81 and 82. See also Milman, The History of Christi-
anity, Vol. I. p. 419, and Vol. II. p. 156.

% Ibid., p. 39. § Ibid., pp. 23, 56, 68.

132 The Transvaluation

to the rank of a certain " middle class,"* of which he
gives us but the vaguest description.

Hermann Schiller, writing a retrospect of the years
preceding 117 a.d., brings Nietzsche's contention con-
siderable support. He says the proofs upon which the
belief is based that members of the higher and more
cultivated circles of Roman Society lent an ear to
Christianity, are still exceedingly unreliable, and even
the Christianity of men and women attached to the
imperial family may be held to be as little proved, as a
persecution of Christians, as Christians, through Domi-
tian, may be said to be proved. " Still," he continues,
" even if it could be demonstrated, beyond a doubt,
that members of the higher classes did belong to the
new religion, the fact would not be of great value, since
it could only be established in regard to very isolated
and exceptional cases. "f

He then proceeds to go into other evidence, for which
there is no room here, but which is all in perfect har-
mony with Nietzsche's views.

Duruy brings overwhelming facts in support of
Nietzsche's side. He speaks of the Mosaic God — the
implacable and jealous master of a privileged race,
being turned by Jesus into the universal God of the
poor and the afflicted.} He also describes the early
Christians at Rome, as " converts made among the
poor,"§ as people* 'living in hovels,"|| he speaks of their

* History of the Romans under the Empire.
t Geschichte der R'omischen Kaiserzeit. Erster Band, 2 Teil.
pp. 577, 578. t Histoire des Romains, Vol. III. p. 559

§ Ibid., Vol. IV. p. 504. || Ibid.

of all Values

133

clothes as consisting mainly of rags * — of their sect, as
being despised and therefore treated mostly with in-
difference by the higher classes, | of Christianity as
spreading in the mob which is inaccessible to philo-
sophers.:]:

In a retrospect of the years preceding 180 a.d. he
says: " For a long time the Faith had spread only
among the lowest classes of the population, where it
brought consolation for all the wretchedness, and that
virtue — charity, which Christ and St Paul had taught
from the first. It condemned riches, which seemed to
it ' a fruit of iniquity or an inheritance of injustice/
and it showed love to poverty and suffering, which it
regarded as the means of redeeming terrestrial life. . . .
How sweet to the disinherited must the gospel of
equality before God have seemed, or the redemption of
souls by the Eternal Son who had been insulted, scoffed
at, scourged, and finally crucified like a slave. Christ's
passion appeared to them merely a page out of their
own history, and the Good Tidings seemed to have
been directed more particularly at the small and the
lowly."§

There are yet other passages in Duruy, which might
be adduced as further supporting Nietzsche ; but there
is no room to quote all, and we shall be obliged to re-
turn to him, in regard to the relation of women to
Christianity.

Dr Hertzberg, in his History of the Roman Empire,

* Histoire dcs domains, Vol. V. p. 223.

t Ibid., Vol. IV. p. 506. % Ibid., p. 512.

§ Ibid., Vol. V. pp. 778. 779-

134

The Transvaluation

speaks in very much the same terms as Schiller and
Duruy,* while Lecky, Bury, Stewart Jones and Pro-
fessor Lindsay, severally say interesting things in more
or less perfect agreement with those already mentioned;
but I shall only find occasion to quote them in the
course of the discussion.

Most authors also seem to agree with regard to
another question relative to the point at issue, and
that is the attitude of women to the early Church. In-
deed, from all accounts, women seem to have shown
rather a weakness for Christianity, and the importance
of this element cannot be overrated. As Mr Bury ob-
serves: " Christianity cherished the amiable affections,
and was particularly suited to be understood and em-
braced by women and children, who, according to
Aristotle, are creatures of passion, as opposed to men
who are capable of living by reason, "f

" Christianity/' says Duruy, " has always been par-
ticularly tenderly disposed towards women. And this is
only just, seeing that they are still its most powerful ad-
herents. Their fertile imagination, their delicate nature,
so virginal still in the spouse and the mother, were
captivated by a Faith which commanded charity and

love By virtue of their nervous constitutions, women

are predisposed to exalted states of mind; many yielded
thereto, and these had visions or prophetic lapses."!

Hertzberg speaks in similar language, and Lecky

* Geschichte des Rbmischen Kaiserreiches. Erstes Buch., pp. 454,
455. 456.

t History of the Later Roman Empire. J.B. Bury, M.A., Vol. I.
p. 18. % Hi stove des Ro mains s Vol. VI. p. 119.

of all Values

135

says: " The Christian teacher was early noted for his
unrivalled skill in playing on the chords of a woman's
heart. The graphic title of ' Earpicker of Ladies/ which
was given to a seductive pontiff of a somewhat later
period, might have been applied to many in the days of
the persecution."*

The social aspect of Christianity, in its influence upon
women, must also not be overlooked. As Hertzberg
says, it considerably elevated them socially, and there-
fore would very naturally meet with particular support
from their sex.

In point of fact, though, a discussion upon this sub-
ject will be found to be very little to the purpose. What
would it matter after all, even if overwhelming evidence
could be brought from the other side, proving to the
hilt, that aristocrats and men of culture constituted at
least a reasonable proportion of the primitive church,
let us say, in Rome ?

We know the decadent philosophy, which, even be-
fore the republic fell, had been introduced into Italy by
Carneades, and which prepared the transition that was
very soon to take place, from the tempestuous liberty
of that age, to the flat servitude of the empire, f

Scepticism and Epicureanism were gaining their con-
verts long before the birth of the Man who was ulti-
mately to draw the famous retort: " What is truth? "
from Pontius Pilate, and in this retort itself, we are

* History of European Morals, Vol. I. p. 418.
t See Pressense : Histoire des trots premiers siecles de PEg/ise,
Vol. I. p. 228.

136 The Transvaluation

able to form some idea of the cynicism of the average
cultivated Roman, at the time when Jesus of Nazareth
was preaching His gospel.

Are we going to compare the Roman elite of the early
empire, even with the illustrious patricians from which
Caesar sprang? Even admitting that aristocrats of the
debased type described by Duruy and Milman, in their
respective comments on the court of Constantine, were
proselytes of the church, what, after all, does such a
fact prove? Is it supposed, for a moment, that it ele-
vates the status of the Christian values ?

We know " the world had grown grey independently
of Christianity, and if it had not grown grey, Christi-
anity would hardly have been possible — would not
have had much meaning ; it met the need of the world
at the time . . .";* we know that " it aspired to a type
of character and [was] actuated by hopes and motives
wholly inconsistent with that proud martial ardour
by which the triumphs of Rome had been won,
and by which alone, her impending ruin could be
aver ted." f

" It exalted the feminine un-Roman side of man's
nature, the side that naturally loves pleasure and
shrinks from pain, and [above all] feels quick sympathy ;
— in fact, the Epicurean side."t

Putting it briefly, we know it was decadent (in the
accepted sense of that word) and appealed to a decad-

* History of the Later Roman Empire, Vol. I. p. 4.

t History of European Morals, Vol. I. p. 413.

X History of the Lafer Roman Empire, Vol. I. p. 8.

of all Values

137

ent people. Almost all historians are unanimous in
attributing the dissolution of the Roman world, partly
to its influence ; and we know, or we have understood
from what has gone before, in this paper, that Nietzsche
makes no distinction between the slave and the de-
cadent type. It is therefore of very little moment what
the early church consisted of, whether of slaves or of
nobles; for, apart from the fact that, owing to the influx
of provincials, the intermarriage of freedmen with their
superiors, and the consequent mixing of the races, the
nobles must have become exceedingly corrupt; we
further know, that the ideals and hopes, even of the
haute volee of Rome, were growing ever more and more
degenerate during the second and third centuries of the
Christian era.

In the heart of this decaying society, Christianity
shot her firmest roots; the noble values succumbed,
stifled by the overwhelming numbers of those who
shared the other, the baser kind. It was the triumph of
the poor in spirit. It was the Will to Power of the de-
generate, the sick and the generally impossible.

If, however, this is all exaggeration, calumny, and
overstatement, how can we account for the fact, that
" one of the earliest results of Christianity in the
[Roman] empire was the promulgation of laws ensuring
the protection of the feeble and the helpless? "* How
can we explain the circumstance that, " the condition
of slaves was also greatly ameliorated by the new spirit

* Professor T. M. Lindsay in the Encyclopedia Britannica,
Article, 44 Christianity " (Ninth Edition), p. 697.

138 The Transvaluation

of Christianity * which was then working in society " ;f
or that " the silent revolution which Christianity
wrought in social morality is to be traced . . . above all,
in the establishment of buildings for the reception of
strangers, alms-houses for the poor, hospitals and
orphan-houses for the sick and the forsaken? "J

These people would have power, they would propa-
gate their species and survive as well as the high, the
healthy and the happy; how could they do so? How
could they get the powerful, the believers in healthy
and well-constituted life, to allow them to do so ?

Everything was against them. Even the law of Nature
seemed to be that they should perish. What did they
do? Danger lends cunning. We have seen what they
did. They made the astutest attempt that was ever
made to turn all things topsy-turvy. Theirs was the
first Transvaluation of all Values. If with Professor
Saintsbury, we are going to speak of topsyturvifica-
tion: theirs was the first topsyturvification. But we
prefer Herbert Spencer's expression: " Inversion of
thought and sentiment."

Indeed it would even be unwise to ignore the passage
in his works in which he finds cause to make use of this
expression so reminiscent of Nietzsche's own phrase:
" the world upside-down." It throws light upon our
subject, and it shows, moreover, how near even Spencer
himself was, to the discovery of two moralities, — of a
slave- and a master-morality, although at the time

♦Pressense: Histoire des trois premiers siec/es, Vol. II. pp.
274-277.

f Prof. Lindsay, Encyclopedia Brttanmca. % Ibid.

of all Values

139

when he comes nearest to it, he is only speaking of the
Restraints on Free Competition.

In the second volume of his Ethics, he says : " Among
those who compete with one another in the same occu-
pation, there must in all cases be some who are the
more capable and a larger number who are the less
capable. In strict equity, the more capable are justified
in taking full advantage of their greater capabilities,
and where beyond their own sustentation, they have to
provide for the sustentation of their families, and the
meeting of further claims, the sanction of strict equity
suffices them. Usually, society immediately benefits by
the putting-out of their highest powers, and it also
receives a future benefit by the efficient fostering of its
best members and their offspring.

" In such cases then — and they are the cases which
the mass of society, constituted chiefly of manual
workers, presents us with — justice needs to be but little
qualified by beneficence. This proposition is indeed
denied, and the opposite proposition affirmed, by hosts
of workers in our own day. Among the trades-unionists
and among leading socialists, as also among those of
the rank and file, there is now the conviction, expressed
in a way implying indignant repudiation of any other
conviction, that the individual has no right to incon-
venience his brother worker by subjecting him to any
stress of competition. A man who undertakes to do
work by the piece at lower rates than would else be
paid, and is enabled by diligence long-continued to
earn a sum nearly double that which he would have

140 The Transvaluation

received as wages, is condemned as ' unprincipled ' !
It is actually held that he has no right thus to take ad-
vantage of his superior powers and his greater energy ;
even though he is prompted to do this by the responsi-
bilities a large family entails, and by a desire to bring
up his children well; so completely have the 'advanced'
among us inverted the old ideas of duty and merit."

Here, as Spencer might have seen, we have an ex-
ample of the Will to Power of the less capable, becom-
ing victorious over the more capable, through a valua-
tion. And what is this valuation? Why, that to the less
capable, all that is more capable is " evil therefore
they call the more capable man unprincipled! If he
accepts this valuation, as he very often must, owing to
being outnumbered, his greater capabilities are van-
quished, and are cancelled from among the factors that
may lead mankind a step farther forward. " Inversion
of thought and sentiment "; that is what inferior- or
slave-morality must accomplish before it can be vic-
torious : that is the expedient of the incapable, the im-
potent and the poor in spirit, when they wish to make
their kind paramount.

Every means, every artifice, every strategy, that
presented itself to their imagination, they used to
further their subterranean purpose. Not only must the
strong, healthy and powerful, blush with shame for
being what they are ; but the happy among them must
be taught, that happiness is almost a sin. They must be
taught that " wretchedness is a selection and distinc-
tion from God, that the dogs which are liked most are

of all Values

141

whipped, that the misery of the weak, the oppressed
and the diseased, may perhaps also be a preparation, a
trial, a schooling, perhaps even more — something
which at some time to come, will be requited and paid
back with immense interest in gold, no! — in happiness.
This they call blessedness." *

" For whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth," says
the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews. " As many as I
love, I rebuke and chasten," is a sentiment to be found
in Revelations.

Thus they deck out and adorn the inevitable
wretchedness of their condition, and wish to wield
power with this decoration. These listless ones suffer-
ing from life as from a crushing burden ; what do they
do? They posit a beyond, where their species alone will
attain to honour, happiness and the like; where the
lowly will become mighty, where the poor will be lying
in the lap of comfort and smug ease, while their
enemies, the rich, will be writhing in eternal agony.
"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a
needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of
God." This is one of their household sentiments.
" These people who invented hell, that they might have
a heaven upon earth, "f who invented the concept
" beautiful soul," that they might at least possess
something beautiful " here below "$ and with a thirst
for power which their impotence only aggravated,
stopped at nothing, no, not even at the attempt to

* G.M., p 48. f Z., "The Convalescent One."

X See G.M., p. 166.

142 The Transvaluation

monopolise virtue upon earth,* in order to gain their
ends.

'* God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to
confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak
things of the world to confound the things which are
mighty.

" And base things of the world, and things which are
despised, hath God chosen, yea and things which are
not, to bring to nought things that are."

To those who can boast of the smallest " tincture of
psychology," is it not clear, now, in what kind of mind
these thoughts originated, or for what kind of minds
they were expressed ? Is it necessary to press the point ?

" We must not embellish or deck out Christianity, it
has waged a deadly war against the higher type of man,
it has put in ban all fundamental instincts of this type,
it has distilled evil, the evil one, out of these instincts :
— strong man as the typical reprobate, as ' out-cast
man.' Christianity has taken the part of the weak, the
low, the ill-constituted, it has made an ideal out of the
antagonism to the preservative instincts of strong life ;
it has ruined the reason of the intellectually strongest
natures, in that it taught men to regard the highest
values of intellectuality as sinful, as misleading, as
temptations, "f

We now clearly see, that it is not the hopes or the
little comforts or the legends of Christianity, that Nietz-
sche wishes to combat. The nature of Professor Hux-
ley's attack upon Christianity seemed futile to him; as
* G.M., p. 165. t C.W., p. 244.

of all Values

143

he somewhere declares : ' ' all its legends and metaphysical
beliefs might be a thousand times more incredible than
they are, and I would have nought to say. But it is the
morality, — the moralic acid — underlying it all, which I
regard as the great danger — Christian ideals."

Christian values being of that type which he dis-
tinguishes as slave-morality, they represent the de-
scending line of life, and with them, Nietzsche declares,
man must perforce degenerate. Nietzsche regards these
values as the means of handicapping the desirable type
of man, in the race of life ; they equalise the chances of
the desirable and undesirable in this world, and, when
Nietzsche points out that this is wrong, he does no more
than Herbert Spencer did, when he said: " a society
which takes for its maxim — ' It shall be as well for you
to be inferior as to be superior,' will inevitably de-
generate and die away in long-drawn miseries."* The
only point which is here at issue between Nietzsche and
Spencer, lies in the meanings given to the terms
" superior " and " inferior."

And it is precisely Christian morality and Christian
ideals which we have not succeeded in ridding ourselves
of. Although we may repudiate all religious views, it is
the religion of pity and patient toleration which still
reigns in our heart of hearts.

We have but to look around, in order to convince
ourselves as to how many-too-many we are allowing
to survive like parasites in our midst ; how many-too-

* Principles of Ethics, Vol. II. p. 281 ; set also Principles of
Biology, Vol. II. pp. 532, 533.

144 The Transvaluation

many we are allowing to propagate, who have no right
to do so, how many-too-many we are cruelly keeping
alive as monuments of misery, serving but to depress
and embitter the rising generation. " Both sexes ought
to refrain from marriage if they are in any marked de-
gree inferior in body or mind," said Darwin; " but," he
added, desperately, " such hopes are Utopian."*

" The sickly are the great danger of man: not the
evil, not the ' beasts of prey.' They who are ill-shaped,
prostrated and wrecked from birth, they, the weakest,
are those who most undermine life among men: who
most dangerously poison and question our confidence
in life, in man, in ourselves."!

And these, with our Christian morality, we maintain,
and succour, to the detriment of all that is successful,
well-constituted and promising ; to the detriment of all
that can stand as a pledge for the future of our race. It
is a war between the sick and the sound. The sick ele-
vated pity to the highest place among the virtues, and
the sound allowed themselves to be duped, because
virtue is tempting and is attended with great rewards
hereafter.

And who, among you, to-day, who is clear-sighted
enough, can doubt which class, the sick or the sound,
is obtaining the victory? Nietzsche asks you, is it your
taste that this state of things should be allowed to con-
tinue? Are you going to be instrumental in effecting
the conquest of the sick over the sound? Does the type

* Descent of Man, 2nd Edit., Vol. II. p 483.
G.M., p. 164.

of all Values

145

of man, who is tending to survive with Christian values,
answer to your ideal of man, to your taste in manhood?

The problem of the value of pity and morality of pity
is the serious problem Nietzsche set himself to solve.
Are we to cling to this morality, which has been im-
posed upon us with such skill, such insidious subtlety
and so much ostentation of all that it has appropriated
as its own in virtue, value and highest hopes, and which
under examination proves to have an origin so un-
deniably base?

Do we not see in this morality of the present day,
precisely the hindrance of power, the cultivation of an
evil odour about all that is mighty, healthy and happy ?
and therefore the multiplication of that kind of people
who possess the other, the opposite qualities ; depend-
ence, lowliness, impotence, sickness and humility. The
results of these principles are already showing them-
selves, wherever we choose to look, not in thousands,
but in millions of cases.

" Man is the sick animal " par excellence, and he will
continue getting ever more sick, in the forcing house of
superterrestrial virtues and ideals which modern
Europe has become.

" The more normal the sickliness is in man — and we
cannot deny this normality, — the more highly those
rare cases of spiritual and bodily capability, the lucky
cases of man, should be honoured; and the more rigor-
ously the well-constituted should be guarded against
that worst air, sick-room air. Is that done? ... All in all
it is not the diminution of the fear of man which is de-

K

146 The Transvaluation

sirable. For this fear compels the strong to be strong,
nay, as the case may be, even terrible. Fear preserves
the well-constituted type of man. That which really is
to be feared, that which proves fatal beyond fatalities
— is not the great fear, but the great surfeit of man. . . .
He who smells, not only with his nose, but with his eyes
and ears as well, will, almost wherever he steps to-day,
experience a sensation as of mad and sick-house air."*

The noble, healthy and master values in morality
have been stifled and well-nigh forgotten. The happy
and healthy have actually been taught to say: " It is a
disgrace to be happy! There is too much misery! "J

Nietzsche protests against this ridiculous surrender on
the part of those, only, who have a right to universalise
their kind, and the multiplication of whose type would
be a blessing to mankind. ..." There could be no
greater, no more fatal misunderstanding," he says,
" than if thus the happy, the well-constituted, the
mighty in body and soul were to begin to doubt their
own right to happiness. Away with this world turned
upside down! " he cries. " Away with this shameful
effeminacy of sentiment ! That the sick may not make
the sound sick — and this would be the meaning of such
an effeminacy — surely this should be the first point of
view on earth. "J

Nietzsche will not have the higher made a tool of
what is lower ; the idea is repugnant to him ; it is not his

* G.M., pp. 163, 164. Nietzsche here adds in parenthesis:
" (I am, as is but fair, speaking here of the realm of human civilisa-
tion,— every kind of Europe existing nowadays on earth)."

t G.M., p. 167. X Ibid.

of all Values

147

taste. He regards the right of the happy and well-con-
stituted to exist, to be here on earth, as a thousand
times greater than that of the wretched and the sick.
For on the happy alone devolves the task of propagat-
ing worthy and promising men: they alone are under
the obligation for the to-morrow and the day-after-
morrow of mankind. " What they are able to do, they
shall do, that the sick could never and should never
do! "*

This condemnation of Christian values, he would
write on all walls. He says he has means wherewith he
can make even the blind see.f From his standpoint
Christianity is dwarfing, deforming and generally de-
teriorating man, mentally and physically. The type
that is tending to survive by means of it, is contrary to
his taste. He wishes this type, to be contrary to our
taste. He says his warning comes only just in the nick
of time; " the soil is still rich enough for that purpose.
But one day that soil will be impoverished and tame,
no high tree being any longer able to grow from it." J

" There are days," says Nietzsche, " when I am
visited by a feeling blacker than the blackest melan-
choly— contempt of man. And, that I have no doubt
with regard to what I despise, whom I despise, — it is
the man of to-day, the man with whom I am fatally
contemporaneous. The man of to-day — I suffocate
from his impure breath. With respect to what is past, I
am like all who perceive of a great tolerance, i.e. a

* G.M., p. 168. t C.W., p. 354.

X Z., "Int. Speech," IT 5.

148 The Transvalu ATioii

generous self-overcoming. With a gloomy circumspec-
tion I go through the mad-house world of entire millenni-
ums (it may be called ' Christianity,' ' Christian Faith,'
' Christian Church ') — I take care not to make mankind
accountable for its insanities. But my feeling changes
suddenly, and breaks out as soon as I enter the modern
period, our period. Our age knows. . . . What was for-
merly, merely morbid, now has become unseemly, — it
is unseemly to be a Christian! "*

Unless we approach Nietzsche with prejudice, unless
we read him superficially, and without keeping our eyes
constantly upon his aim, we must realise that there is
much more, under all this antagonism towards
Christianity, than the mere bitterness of a factionary or
the destructive lust of an iconoclast. Huxley attacked
Christianity very thoroughly and not without some
show of bitterness ; but those among you who have read
his Science and Christian Tradition, will remember not
only that he claims to be aiming at the truth alone, but
that his methods of attack is quite different from the
one you have just heard.

Nietzsche saw grand and unexhausted possibilities in
man, in man's past he thought he held the warrant for
still expecting something great from man's future, and
upon this warrant he built his hope of Superman. He
attacks Christian values, because he holds them to be
inimical to a higher development of man: there is no
question with him of a petty dispute with the Church
concerning the probability of the " Gadarene-Swine "
* C.W., P. 295.

of all Values

149

story. His attack upon Christian values, as we know,
has a loftier and more practical aim. He would see man
have an ideal on earth. He would draw men's eyes
downwards and give man a practical hope and aim.

" Remain faithful unto earth, my brethren, with the
power of your virtue! Let your giving love and your
knowledge serve the significance of earth ! Thus I beg
and conjure you.

" Let it not fly away from what is earthly and beat
against eternal walls with its wings! Alas! so much
virtue hath ever gone astray in flying !

" Like me lead back unto earth the virtue which has
gone astray — yea ; back unto body and life : that it may
give its significance unto earth, a human signific-
ance! "*

" Many sick folk were always among the makers of
poetry and the god-maniacs; furiously they hate him
who prosecuteth research and the youngest of virtues
that is called honesty.

" Backward they ever gaze into the dark times : then,
of course, illusion and belief were something else. In-
toxication of reason was likeness unto God, and doubt
was sin.

" Only too well I know these god-like ones ; they wish
to be believed in and that doubt should be sin." f

As I told you in my last lecture, Nietzsche was not an
iconoclast, from predilection. No bitterness or empty
hate dictated his vituperations against the Church of
his parents and forefathers. He knew too well what

♦ Z., Of the Giving Virtue," IT 2. f Z. , » Of Back-World Men."

150 The Transvaluation

Christianity meant to the millions who profess it, to
approach the task of uprooting it, with levity or even
with haste. He broke the idols of his ancestors and con-
temporaries, because he wished to present the latter
with an ideal more worthy of their inheritance, more
compatible with their unexhausted powers, and, above
all, more earthly and more practicable.

" He who must be a creator in good and evil," he
says, " verily, he must first be a destroyer, and break
values into pieces."*

In my last lecture you were given a description of the
ideal Nietzsche had. The object of this lecture was to
show you how he attempted to clear the ground for it.
And it will be the business of the next paper to consider
how he intends rearing his ideal on the land he has
devastated.

Like a prophet, he stands at Man's cross-roads, the
time he says is Man's great Mid-day.

" The present and past on earth — alas ! my friends,
— these are what I find most intolerable. And I should
not know how to live, if I were not a prophet of what
must come.

" A prophet, a willing one, a creator, a veritable
future, and a bridge unto the future — and alas ! besides,
as it were a cripple at that bridge. All these things is
Zarathustra."f

I cannot remind you too often, that he calls himself
only " a prelude to better players," that he tells us
emphatically that there are other ways than his, and

* Z., " Of Self-overcoming." f Z., " Of Salvation."

of all Values

that he would prefer us to find one of our own which is
not his, than that we should have none at all, than that
we should remain indifferent, or decadent, or Christians.

" Eagerly and with much crying, they drove their
flocks over the wooden bridges, as if there were only a
single bridge into the future! Verily, those herdsmen
also were sheep !

" Petty intellects and comprehensive souls these
herdsmen had: but, my brethren, what small territories
hitherto have been even the most comprehensive
souls! "*

With this I am at the conclusion of Nietzsche's con-
demnation of Christianity. It is always an unpleasant
task to destroy — even to announce the destroyer. A
more pleasant task awaits me ; that of communicating
the constructive side of his moral philosophy to you.

At the noon of Life, he said he came ; during the fore-
noon we had been irresponsible, he says he regards our
past with toleration. But, now, we Know. It is un-
seemly, now, to blind ourselves to what lies before us.
We are at the fateful crossways. Is this poet-philosopher
estimating us too highly perhaps in supposing that the
ideal he gives us, is really compatible with our strength,
with our unexhausted powers? Is our answer to him,
going to be, that we do not feel able to follow his lead ?

" Oh, sky above me!" he sings. "Thou pure, thou
high ! Therein consisteth thy purity for me, that there
are no eternal spiders of reason and spiders' webs of
reason —

* Z„ "Of Priests,"

152 Transvaluation of Values

" That for me thou art a dancing ground for god-like
chances, that for me thou art a god-like table for god-
like dice and dice-players !

" But thou blushest? Spake I things unutterable?
did I revile whilst intending to bless thee ?

" Oh, sky above me. Thou bashful! Thou glowing!
Oh, thou my happiness before sunrise ! The day cometh !
now therefore let us part! "*

* Z., " Before sunrise."

END OF LECTURE III.

IV

Nietzsche: The Moralist

In this last paper, I shall attempt to gather up all the
threads of Nietzsche's teaching, and seek that point
towards which all his many hints, all his innumerable
and apparently unconnected paradoxes, and all his
thousand and one pregnant innuendoes, seem inevitably
to direct us; and it is my hope that I may succeed in
proving precisely the reverse of what has so often been
contended in regard to his work. It is my hope to be
able to show you that his philosophy is, after all, a
systematic whole, that whatever the votaries of tabu-
lated formulae and mathematically regulated thought
may say to the contrary, we have in his teaching, a
thing which is of one piece, a well-defined and unmis-
takable figure, hewn from one integral block, whose
silhouette, however, is so subtly delineated and so art-
fully contrived, that, like Rodin's superb Balzac, it may
evade our mental grasp, it may seem to us, at first, to
be a thing without real form, without careful definition
and, perhaps, without substance.

Having grown used to getting much of our mental
work done for us ; living at a time when even thinking

* Delivered at the University of London, December 9th, 1908.
153

154

Nietzsche

is rapidly becoming a speciality, and being accustomed
to begin a philosopher at his First Principles, and to
read straight on through his more or less easy grada-
tions, until we arrive at what he is pleased to term his
20th or his iooth or his Last Principles; it is readily
admitted that we must be somewhat bewildered by a
man who is quite capable of telling us his last thought
first, and of then rolling us, headforemost, down hill,
over his experiences, so that we reach the bottom of his
depths, giddy, tired, and often bruised. But who, after
all, is to dictate what the method shall be? Are we as a
rule directed by the recipients of our gifts, as to how
and what we should buy, and how and when we should
bestow our purchases? Do we feel it incumbent upon us
to make our form, unquestionably their form? And
when we face Nietzsche, we must remember that we
are in the presence of a prodigal giver.

Because we often fail to follow his line of thought,
are we to deny that he is thinking in a straight line?
And may we not, by so doing, make him responsible for
a fault which he most probably is quite innocent of?
These seem to me questions which might well be put,
before we hastily proclaim our author's philosophy as
unsystematic.

We are spoilt children, in this sense, but spoilt
children are generally so, in both acceptations of the
word; and there is no doubt that the reception which
Nietzsche's philosophy has met with, shows very
pointedly how completely former philosophers have
spoilt us.

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155

Because Nietzsche refused to regard us as children at
all ; because he spoke to us, as one speaks to intelligent
friends and equals, and not as one addresses a class-
room of small boys, we say he brings us no system; we
may even say with Professor Saintsbury, that after
writing his third or fourth book, he could not have been
quite compos mentis ; let us, however, hesitate before
we underscore these opinions too confidently. Such
verdicts have been given before in regard to great
thinkers. Do we all know that when Rodin's Balzac
was first exhibited at the Salon des Beaux Arts, it had
to be protected from a jeering and guffawing mob,
whereas, now, it is acknowledged to be one of his sub-
limest creations by those who are best able to form any
judgment in the matter? If we did not know this, we
certainly know how many more cases of the kind it
would be possible to quote.

Nietzsche said to his disciples: —

" Ye say ye believe in Zarathustra? But what is
Zarathustra worth? Ye are my faithful ones: but what
are all faithful ones worth?

" When ye had not yet sought yourselves, ye found
me. Thus do all faithful ones ; hence all belief is worth
so little.

" Now I ask you to lose me and find yourselves, not
until all of you have disowned me, shall I return unto
you."*

This is an exhortation in favour of independent
mental exercise. No teacher who valued his teaching

* Z., "Of the Giving Virtue," IT 3.

156

Nietzsche

higher than his pupils' intellects could talk in this way.
And are we to suppose, therefore, that in addressing
those whom he held to be his equals, this same teacher
was going to offer them the insult of making things
easy for them?

When we approach Nietzsche's philosophy, we must
be prepared to be independent thinkers; in fact, the
greatest virtue of his philosophy is perhaps the sub-
tlety with which it imposes the obligation upon one, of
thinking alone, of scoring off one's own bat, and of
shifting intellectually for one's self.

" I am a railing alongside the stream; whoever is
able to seize me, may seize me, your crutch, however,
I am not."*

The average philosopher makes disciples and en-
slaves them. Who has not been, for a time, the slave of
Kant's Categorical Imperative, of Mills' Utilitarianism,
of Spencer's Administrative Nihilism, of Darwin's
Struggle for Existence} Nietzsche is prouder when he
lends a man the courage to think honestly and courage-
ously for himself, than when he makes him his proselyte.

" Have ye courage, O my brethren? Are ye stout-
hearted ? I do not mean courage in the presence of wit-
nesses, but the courage of hermits and eagles on which
not even a God looketh any more.

" Cold souls, mules, blind folk, drunken folk I do
not call stout-hearted. Courage hath he who knoweth
fear but subdueth fear ; he who seeth the abyss, but with
pride. He who seeth the abyss, but with the eagle's

♦ Z., "Of the Pale Criminal."

The Moralist

157

eyes; he who graspeth the abyss with an eagle's claws;
he hath courage."*

" If ye want to rise high, use your own legs! Do not
let yourselves be carried upwards, sit not down on
strange backs and heads! "f

The nearer we get to the heart of Nietzsche's teach-
ing, the more honestly convinced we become, that he is
rather a friend walking at our elbow, in the open, sug-
gesting, insinuating, exhorting and chaffing, than a
herdsman looking for a herd which he may lead and
squeeze into a pen.

This, in fact, is the test underlying Nietzscheism. If
we are of the herd, we naturally sniff around for our
fold, for our rules, and formulae, for our restrictions and
our constraints; we have learned to love these things,
and we cry aloud, when they are not to be found:
" behold our leader has no system! He is but a bungler
who has no business with herds! " — no, indeed, Nietz-
sche had no business with herds ; this is true. In respect
of the herd, he was certainly not compos mentis ; but
then, to do him justice, he never claimed to be.

However incredible the statement may sound, it is
nevertheless true, that Nietzsche's philosophy actually
constitutes one regularly organised whole. Even the
course I was compelled to adopt in these lectures, is
evidence enough of this; for, after giving you his
analysis of modern morality, I was driven to describe
his ideal Man, that you might have immediate justifica-
* Z., "Of Higher Man," IT 4. f Ibid., IT 10.

158

Nietzsche

tion for his drastic criticism ; while in the third lecture,
his condemnation of Christian values came but as a
necessary preface to this lecture, in which I wish to
treat exclusively of his values. The surprise of those
who accuse him of want of system, however, will pro-
bably increase considerably, when they hear that even
his moral values cannot be isolated and studied apart,
that they must be understood through his Sociology
and in the light of his ideal man. This statement, I
know, has been contradicted again and again, not only
in words, but in actions ; for we have only to think of
Mr George Bernard Shaw in order to have an instance,
at once, of a distinguished thinker, who believes he can
divide Nietzsche up into portions, and take only that
portion of him that happens to show most affinity to
the Shavian constitution, and leave the rest. Every-
one knows that Mr Shaw is a socialist, despite the fact
that he claims to be in agreement with Nietzsche's
attitude towards morality.*

Be this as it may, Nietzsche's Sociology, his ideal
Man and his morality are all one, and to separate them
would be as foolish and as unwarrantable as to separate
pity or charity from Christianity.

" There are some that preach my doctrine of life,"
he says of the Bernard Shaws of the world, " but at the
same time are preachers of equality and tarantulae."f

Now at the root of all sociologies lies the notion of
what life means to the Sociologist. The Hedonists and

* See Bernard Shaw in The Saturday Review.
t Z., "Of Tarantula."

The Moralist

159

the Utilitarians practically agree in solving the problem
of life, by making its end the greatest happiness, or the
greatest smugness, of the greatest number. Nietzsche
solves the problem of existence by declaring life to be
Will to Power.

What do such cross-purposes mean? The layman
who thinks an instant upon these questions, becomes
desperate. He refuses even to believe that the phil-
osophers, themselves, know what they are talking
about. After arriving at a general concept of what social
life is, I think we shall be nearer to a clear grasp of the
question we have to solve.

The whole matter seems to revolve around the point
discussed in the second paper, where I was considering
Nietzsche's attitude towards pain. There can be no
doubt, I suppose, that happiness constitutes the per-
formance of those actions which we are most gifted to
perform. Spencer says somewhere that the reason why
a rhinoceros ploughs up the ground with his horn, in
confinement, is, that having no enemy to fight, he
must seek the pleasure of using the weapon of attack
and defence, with which he is gifted, in some other way.
He is an adept in the violent use of his natural weapon,
it consequently gives him pleasure to use it.

Now, presumably, this view holds good with us. We
find most pleasure in performing those actions for
which we are most thoroughly gifted, or, as the biolo-
gists say, " to which we are best adapted."

Laotze, writing in China, about six centuries before
Christ, said: "Whosoever knoweth how to give

i6o

Nietzsche

in and to forget himself [in fact, to accommodate
himself] will remain whole."* It is evident, therefore,
that we are not concerned here with a new doctrine.
It seems to be a very old one, and one that is very
generally accepted. The only difficulty about it, is its
application.

It seems clear that, since we are rational beings with
certain inventive powers, we can exercise some choice
as to what actions and what manner of life we shall
become adapted to. If it really be a fact, that we, as
human beings, are still unadapted, and that a large
number of the social actions we perform are still un-
pleasant to us; it must be pretty evident that no
definite mode of life has as yet been fixed upon by our
innermost nature, — and, speaking without exaggera-
tion, how could we possibly expect the case to be other-
wise; seeing that, with us Europeans, at least, every
century turns its predecessor practically upside down ?

But it is possible, as we shall see, to become adapted,
to any conditions, and therefore to grow happy in any
conditions, provided of course we survive the process
of adaptation. That famous Chinaman, Laotze, did not
know, perhaps, that it would be precisely the practical
acceptation of his doctrine of adaptation which would
help to stamp the character of his nation for over two
thousand years.

The preachers of Hedonism, therefore, and the
Utilitarians, unlike Nietzsche and unlike the Puritans,
who, as we shall see, are also anti-adaptationalists,

* C. De Harlez, "Textes Taoi'stes," p. 42, chap. xxii.

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161

point peremptorily to happiness, that is to say to com-
plete adaptation, as the important aim of all, and give
no thought to the desirability or the advisability of the
thing, if it really were achieved.

All our hasty Parliamentary bills, all our little devices
for alleviating suffering, almost all our philosophies —
except Nietzsche's, are merely little essays, little grop-
ing attempts on our part, to become adapted to our
conditions ; that is to say, to become Gifted for the ac-
tions we have to perform in our conditions. The growth
in London, alone, of the Music-Hall and Theatre busi-
ness, is a sign of the times. The arduousness of town-
life must be forgotten ; the unpleasantness of actions,
which we are not adapted to, must be mitigated, — how
do we try to adapt ourselves to them? This point is
important. We try to adapt ourselves to them by
making them merely a part of a whole, which we call
town-life, and in which we introduce a compensating
factor consisting of Theatres, Music-Halls and Ex-
hibitions. The so-called " advanced " and " smart "
set who jeer at the Puritan when he inveighs against
Music-Halls and Theatres, forget that of the two move-
ments (theirs and his) his is the more advanced, the
more pregnant with promises for the future. I do not
suppose now, and I never have supposed that the
Puritan rails against Music-Halls and Theatres from
any deep philosophical motive; but the fact remains,
that in doing so, he is more conducive to reform,
movement, and instability than those he rails against,
because he is preaching against those very measures

Nietzsche

which threaten to adapt us sooner or later to the per-
formance of actions which are now, at least, totally
opposed to our tastes and inmost desires.

We are trying hard, nowadays, to become adapted.
Socialists think they have found the road thereto. But,
is it clearly understood that any method of life, how-
ever base, however ignominious, might ultimately mean
happiness to us, provided we grew adapted to it ?

This is precisely the great danger, — the great cloud
lowering over mankind. This is the danger Nietzsche
came to warn us about. Even in Socialism, happiness
may be found, provided we become adapted to it. The
question is not, whether Socialism is possible, it is
rather : whether it is worthy of us ; whether it is digni-
fied for us, in view of our unexhausted powers, to adapt
ourselves to it ?

" This universal degeneracy of mankind to the level
of the man of the future," says Nietzsche, " as idealised
by the socialistic fools and shallow-pates — this degener-
acy and dwarfing of man to an absolutely gregarious
animal (or as they call it, to a man of ' free society '),
this brutalising of men into pygmies with equal rights
and claims, is undoubtedly possible! He who has
thought out this possibility to its ultimate conclusion,
knows another loathing unknown to the rest of man-
kind— and perhaps also a new mission ! "

But let us hear what an avowed Utilitarian and advo-
cate of Liberty for all, John Stuart Mill, had to say on
the subject of this maniacal scurry to become adapted,
by all means, by all subterfuges, by all prevarications: —

The Moralist 163

" We have a warning example in China — a nation of
much talent, and, in some respects, even wisdom, owing
to the rare good fortune " [you notice he cannot even
help calling it " rare good fortune " in spite of what is
going to follow], " owing to the rare good fortune of
having been provided at an early period with a par-
ticularly good set of customs, the work, in some meas-
ure, of men to whom even the most enlightened
European must accord, under certain limitations, the
title of sages and philosophers. They are remarkable,
too, in the excellence of the apparatus, for impressing,
as far as possible, the best wisdom they possess upon
every mind in the community, and securing that those
who have appropriated most of it shall occupy posts of
honour and power. Surely the people who did this have
discovered the secret of human progressiveness, and
must have kept themselves steadily at the head of the
movement of the world.*

" On the contrary, they have become stationary —
have remained so for thousands of years ; and if they
are ever to be further improved, it must be by foreign-
ers. They have succeeded beyond all hope in what
English philanthropists are so industriously working at

* Why Mill says " Surely " here, it is impossible to say. If he
had said: "surely the people who did this have discovered the
secret of human stultification," we should have understood. The
word M surely" in this sentence betrays the whole attitude of
muddle-headedness, which he maintained to the fundamental law of
the question he was discussing. It will be retorted that " surely "here
is ironical. My reply is that • ' surely " stands for " one would think,"
and that it therefore implies that what follows is a probable con-
clusion which might, at a pinch, be drawn from the premises ;
whereas neither the reader nor the philosopher has any business to
regard the conclusion as possible — much less as probable.

164

Nietzsche

— in making a people alike, all governing their thoughts
and conduct by the same maxims and rules ; and these
are the fruits. The modern regime of public opinion is,
in an unorganised form, what the Chinese educational
and political systems are in an organised, and unless
individuality shall be able successfully to assert itself
against this yoke, Europe, notwithstanding its noble
antecedents . . . will tend to become another China!"*

This is John Stuart Mill's own expression of astonish-
ment that the state of affairs which Laotze's doctrine
of adaptation undoubtedly helped to bring about, was
not a progressive, a mercurial one!

But it must not be thought that Nietzsche cries out
against Socialism alone. It would seem just as great a
calamity to him if we became adapted to the condi-
tions existing in Europe at the present day. This hurry
and anxiety to achieve complete adaptation at all is
what he objects to. He has higher aims for humanity;
— aims more compatible with humanity's antecedents
and more worthy of its latent possibilities. Hence his
bitterness towards the Hedonists and the Utilitarians,
hence, too, as we have seen, his exhortation to us, to be
less fearful of pain.

Honest and truthful in intellectual matters, he could
not even think that men are equal. Those to whom this
thought gives pleasure, he conjures not to confound
pleasure with truth; and, like Professor Huxley, he
finds himself compelled to recognise " The Natural In-
equality of Men."

* On Liberty, Chapter, " The Elements of Weil-Being."

The Moralist

165

" I do not wish to be confounded with, and mistaken
for, those preachers of equality. For, within me, justice
saith: * Men are not equal! '

" Neither shall they become so! For what would be
my love for Superman if I spake otherwise?

"On a thousand bridges and gangways, they shall
throng towards the future, and ever more and more
war and inequality shall be set up amongst them. Thus
my great love maketh me speak! "*

It is the reverse of adaptation that Nietzsche recom-
mends; for only those who regard our present condi-
tions as the best possible, can dare to preach adapta-
tion, as a gospel, to-day. He says rather: —

" Good and evil, rich and poor, high and low, and all
the names of values : they shall be weapons and clash-
ing signs that life always hath to surpass itself again !

" Upwards it striveth to build itself with pillars and
stairs, life itself: into far distances it longeth to gaze
and outwards after blessed beauties — therefore it
needeth height.

" And because it needeth height it needeth stairs and
contradiction between stairs and those rising beyond
them! To rise, striveth life, and to surpass itself in
rising.' 'f

Nietzsche recognises the natural Inequality of Men ;
all systems of Sociology who refuse to recognise, or who
try to compromise concerning, it, he condemns ; and, in
his Sociology, he makes provision for it. Those which do
not make provision for it do violence unto mankind, they

* Z., "Of Tarantula." f Ibid.

Nietzsche

are a sort of Procrustean outrage on Nature, an attack
upon her most fundamental and most decent principles.

He goes further, however, than the average believer
in the Inequality of men usually goes. He sees precisely
J in this inequality a purpose to be served, a condition to
be exploited. Every reader of his philosophy is familiar
with his doctrine of chance, — his recommendation to
all, to exploit chance and not to avoid it or let it exploit
them.

Well, precisely in this chance distinction of classes
among men, he sees a condition to be exploited and
turned to advantage. He says : —

" Every elevation of the type 'man ' has hitherto been
the work of an aristocratic society — andso will it always
be — a society believing in a long scale of gradation of
rank and differences of worth among human beings."*

The higher men of a society, where gradations of rank
are recognised as a necessary and indispensable condi-
tion, constitute the class, in which the hopes of a real
elevation of humanity may be placed. In such a society,
no very perfect adaptation is possible. The border-line
between each caste, becomes a territory where the
contiguous classes act and react upon one another,
where different influences produce new forms, and
where the danger of stability is successfully and repeat-
edly resisted and overcome. It is an organism contain-
ing in its constitution the guarantee, almost, of
heterogeneity. Like warmed water, it has strata, and
currents continually running through those strata.
* G.E.; p. 223.

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167

Here, then, is the kind of society in which the
moralist, with a very fixed idea as to " who is to be
master of the world," may find the requisite scope
for the display and the application of his talents. Here
he may try to realise his ideal by directing precisely
those currents we speak of into the direction which
will lead to an elevation of the type " man."

In such a society, the very condition of unstable
equilibrium, of ill-adaptedness, gives rise to a striving
spirit which might be exploited and guided by the
legislator to the benefit of the ideal race. In such a
society, complete adaptation would have to be regarded
as the devil himself, since it would be the arch-enemy
of the spirit of ascent actuating the conduct of its
greatest heroes. In such a society, Nietzsche says, the
higher men might beget Superman, and it is for this
society that he would legislate. Hear his exhortation
unto Higher Men : —

" O my brethren, I consecrate you to be, and show
unto you the way unto, a new nobility. Ye shall become
procreators and breeders and sowers of the future.

" Verily, ye shall not become a nobility one might
buy like shop-keepers, with shop-keepers' gold. For all
that hath its fixed price is of little value.

" Not whence ye come be your honour in future, but
whither ye go ! Your will, and your foot that longeth to
get beyond yourselves, — be that your new honour !

" O my brethren, not backward, shall your nobility
gaze, but forward ! Expelled ye shall be from all fathers'
and forefathers' lands!

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Nietzsche

" Your children's land ye shall love (be this your new
nobility), the land undiscovered in the remotest sea!
For it I bid your sails seek and seek! "*

This is Nietzsche's taste in Sociology. There are other
tastes, all equally possible. There's the taste for the
herd — the socialistic taste; there's the taste for a Man-
God — absolute monarchy; there's the taste, too, for
Anarchy. To define Nietzsche's system of Sociology in a
sentence, would be to call it an oligarchy, led onward
by an ideal type of man, which the higher caste is ever
trying to realise and surpass.

The aristocracy, in this society, must not be the
pusillanimous mob that bowed and kowtowed to Louis
the Fourteenth of France, or, to go further back, to
many of the Roman Despots. " The essential thing, . . .
in a good and healthy aristocracy," says Nietzsche, " is
that it should not regard itself as a function, either of
the kingship or of the commonwealth, but as the
significance and the highest justification thereof — that
it should therefore accept with a good conscience the
sacrifice of a legion of individuals, who, for its sake,
must be suppressed and reduced to imperfect men, to
slaves and instruments. Its fundamental belief must be
precisely, that society is not allowed to exist for its own
sake, but only as a foundation and scaffolding, by
means of which a select class of beings may be able to
elevate themselves to their higher duties, and in
general, to a higher existence. . . ."f

And Nietzsche does not despair, even of the shallow-

♦ Z., " Of Old and New Tables," IT 12. f G.E., p. 225.

The Moralist

i6g

pated socialists helping him. Indeed, he thinks it per-
fectly possible, if not probable, that they may; for,
after all, what is it they most earnestly strive after? Is
it not the levelling of the whole of society to the rank of
that pusillanimous herd which may ultimately be re-
garded as the necessary groundwork of an oligarchy —
the sort of muscular cells which, in our body, are sub-
servient to the superior nervous cells, and thus con-
stitute the ruled caste of a true oligarchy? Supposing
the birth of a higher man to be still possible in the
Ghettoes of this future socialistic society, is it not clear
that he will find everything ready for him, everything
smoothed and flattened preparatory to the assertion of
his authority and superiority? Admitting slavery, in
some form or other, to be a necessary " condition of
every higher culture,"* is it not clear, that the mob
created by the socialists will be just the ready instru-
ment which the possible higher man will avail himself
of? And has not the same sort of thing happened again
and again, in the past? Although, if he be an adherent
of Nietzsche's, this higher individual is to be no tyrant
in the bad sense, can we doubt that, everywhere on
earth, where tyrants have succeeded in establishing
their rule, the ground has not always been already pre-
pared for them, either by a faint-hearted religious creed,
by a degenerate philosophy, or by a corrupt way of
living? Socialism, in this way, may be a necessary step
towards Nietzsche's ideal ; but it is a dangerous circuit
nevertheless; for there is just the remote chance that
* G.E., p. 225.

170

Nietzsche

mankind might stop half way, become completely
adapted to it, and then no higher man might be possible
and an end would come to manly hopes and ideals.

Mr Chesterton says somewhere, I believe it is in a
review of Dr Oscar Levy's book, The Revival of Aristo-
cracy, that the oligarchic does not need the same manly
hardness as the democratic state, and I believe he gives
as his reason, that democracy presupposes the " desire
to be master " in each individual, whereas oligarchy
grants this master's spirit only to the few and the
select.

It seems never to have occurred to Mr Chesterton,
that in Democracy no real struggle for mastership ever
takes place at all, that, under it, there is much less of a
desire to rule, than a desire to further his own pretty per-
sonal interests, in the individual. Once these have been
reasonably furthered, what is the experience of most
legislators? — the interest of the private individual in
legislation suddenly wanes and, very quickly, vanishes
completely away. Spencer in his Reflections at the end of
his Autobiography confesses that he must, however
reluctantly, admit this to be so,* and his refusal to sit
for Parliament was based to a large extent on consider-
ations of this nature.

No, what the units of a herd most earnestly seek and
find, is smug ease, not necessarily mastership. For
mastership entails responsibility, insight, nerve,
courage and hardness towards one's self, that control
of one's self which all good commanders must have,

* Autobiography, Vol. II. p. 468. Also see pp. 202 awl 466.

The Moralist

i7j

and which is the very antithesis of the gregarious
man's attitude of comparative indulgence towards him-
self.

Now, responsibility, insight, nerve, courage, hard-
ness, are disturbing, they are moreover not necessarily
bound up with the individual gregarian's private inter-
ests, therefore they are not coveted by him. What he
covets is smug ease — and every time some influence
threatens to thwart this wretched complacency, he
suddenly develops an interest for legislation; then,
indeed, for a space, he will wish to be master.

Hardness ? — He knows nothing of the hardness that
can command his heart, his mouth and his hand, before
it attends to the command of others ; he knows nothing
of the hardness that can dispel the doubts of a whole
continent, that can lead the rabble and the ruck to
deeds of anomalous nobility, or that can impose silence
upon the overweening importunities of an assembled
nation. He knows this hardness, that he could coldly
watch the enemy of his private and insignificant little
interests, burnt at the stake; he knows this hardness,
that he would let a great national plan miscarry for
the sake of a mess of pottage ; — if this is the hardness Mr
Chesterton refers to, then we are with him ; the gregari-
ous man and future socialist has this so-called hardness;
but so have all those who burn with resentment, — so
have all parasites and silent worm-gnawers at the
frame-work of great architecture.

" In every healthy society, three types, mutually con-
ditioning and differently gravitating, physiologically

172

Nietzsche

separate themselves, each of which has its own hygiene,
its own domain of labour, its own special sentiment of
perfection, its own special mastership.

" Nature, not Manu, separates from one another the
mainly intellectual individuals, the individuals mainly
^excelling in muscular strength and temperament, and
3jthe third class neither distinguished in the one nor in
the other, the mediocre individuals, — the latter as the
great number; the former as the select individuals.

" The highest caste — I call them the fewest — has, as
the perfect caste, the privileges of the fewest : it belongs
thereto to represent happiness, beauty, goodness on
earth. Only the most intellectual men have the per-
mission to beauty, to the beautiful ; it is only with them
that goodness is not weakness . . . the good is a privilege.
On the other hand, nothing can be less permissible to
them than unpleasant manners, or a pessimistic look,
an eye that makes deformed, — or even indignation with
regard to the entire aspect of things. Indignation is the
privilege of the Chandala; and pessimism similarly.
' The world is perfect * — thus speaks the instinct of the
most intellectual men, affirmative instinct; ' imperfec-
tion, every kind of inferiority to us, distance, pathos of
distance, even the Chandala belongs to this perfection.'
The most intellectual men, as the strongest, find their
happiness in that in which others would find their ruin :
In the labyrinth, in severity towards themselves and
others, in effort; their delight is self -overcoming: with
them asceticism becomes naturalness, requirement,
instinct. A difficult task is regarded by them as a

The Moralist

173

privilege, to play with burdens, which crush others to
death, as a recreation. . . . Knowledge, a form of as-
ceticism.— They are the most venerable kind of man.
That does not exclude their being the most cheerful,
the most amiable. They rule not because they will, but
because they are; they are not at liberty to be the
second in rank. — The second in rank are : the guardians
of right, the keepers of order and security, the noble
warriors, the king, above all, as the highest formula of
warrior, judge and keeper of the law. The second in
rank are the executive of the most intellectual, the
most closely associated with them, relieving them of all
that is coarse in the work of ruling, their retinue, their
right hand, their best disciples. — In all that, to repeat
it once more, there is nothing arbitrary, nothing
4 artificial ' ; what is otherwise, is artificial, — by what

is otherwise, nature is put to shame By the order of I

castes, the order of rank, the supreme law of life itself
is formulated only; the separation of the free types is
necessary for the maintenance of society, for the mak-
ing possible of higher and highest types, — the inequality
of rights is the very condition of there being rights at
all. — A right is a privilege. In his mode of existence,
everyone has his privilege. Let us not undervalue the
privileges of the mediocre. Life always becomes harder
towards the summit, — the cold increases, responsibility
increases. A high civilisation is a pyramid : it can only
stand upon a broad basis, it has for a first prerequisite,
a strongly and soundly consolidated mediocrity.
Handicraft, trade, agriculture, science, the greater part

174

Nietzsche

of art, in a word, the whole compass of business
activity, is exclusively compatible with an average
amount of ability and pretension; the like pursuits
would be displaced among the exceptions, the instinct
appropriate thereto would contradict aristocratism
as well as anarchism. . . . For the mediocre it is a happi-
ness to be mediocre; for them, the mastery in one
thing, specialism, is a natural instinct. It would be
altogether unworthy of a profounder intellect to see in
mediocrity itself an objection. It is indeed the first
necessity for the possibility of exceptions: a high
civilisation is conditioned by it. If the exceptional man
just treats the mediocre with a more delicate touch
than himself and his equals, it is not merely courtesy of
heart, — it is simply his duty. Whom do I hate most
among the mob of the present day? The socialist mob,
the Chandala apostles, who undermine the worKing
man's instinct, his pleasure, his feeling of contentedness
with his petty existence, — who make him envious, who
teach him revenge. . . . The wrong never lies in un-
equal rights, it lies in the pretension to ' equal '
rights."*

This concludes Nietzsche's description of his ideal
society. In examining his morality as we shall now
proceed to do, it will be well to bear this description
carefully in our minds. Of a very large percentage of
those who misunderstand and misjudge him, I think it
may safely be said, that they have omitted to do this;
for it is quite impossible not to see the consequential
* C.W., pp. 339-342.

The Moralist

175

and logical character of his morality, if one keeps the
goal he is aiming at constantly in sight.

At the very zenith of the reign of Christian values upon
earth, under the auspices of the religion of pity, two phil-
osophers, unknown to each other in person, one English,
and the other German, began to write upon morals ; —
each in his own way ; each with a wish to help his fellows ;
each, possibly, with the notion that the hospital atmo-
sphere of modern Europe was becoming intolerable.

The results arrived at by the one, we knew as early
as 1879, the other's works we are only now beginning
to read in England. Herbert Spencer was the one,
Friedrich Nietzsche was the other.

This is what Spencer said : —

" We regard as good the conduct furthering self-
preservation, and as bad, the conduct tending to self-
destruction."*

Those of you who recall Nietzsche's conclusions as
stated in the first paper, will perceive that Spencer's
moral principle is plainly, and in a sense, inevitably,
but a half-statement of the actual fact underlying all
moralities. I say inevitably, since it is in complete
harmony with his views, that Life is Activity, or that
it is " continuous adjustment of internal relations to
external relations." We have seen, however, that life is
more than that ; that the will to preserve self is but an
indirect consequence of a still higher will : the will to
acquire power for self.

• Data of Ethics, p. 25.

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Nietzsche

Overlooking this view, however, and assuming, for
the sake of argument, that Spencer's principle is one
which might perhaps be legitimately formulated from
the data which biology affords, we, who are now ac-
quainted with Nietzsche's standpoint in regard to Man,
must be struck with yet another discrepancy in the
statement of the doctrine, and that is, that self-preser-
vation is, alone, held to be good. The preservation of
no particular type is urged ; simply self-preservation is
held to be good.

True, when we examine Spencer's works closely, we
do indeed see that he has an ideal of a sort: a kind of
glorified industrial, possessed with almost transcen-
dental powers for the production of useful things ; it is an
ideal suggested to him by the ordinary man of his time,
and, even so, we remark a painful lack of outline and
form in the type desired; since the " survival of the
fittest " is urged as a process whereby he will be at-
tained to.

With this stress which Spencer lays upon the bald
principle of the survival of the fittest,* we begin to
suspect what, all along, has been our fear in the study
of his philosophy, and that is, its almost total lack of
taste. Spencer, the man who could seriously contem-
plate the possibility of " setting up a systematic manu-
facture of designs for textile fabrics printed or woven,
as well as for paper hangings and the like," j does not
surprise us therefore, when, in his attitude towards the

* Principles of Sociology ; Vol. III. p. 599. Principles of
Biology, Vol. II. p. 532.

f Autobiography, Vol. I. p. 309.

The Moralist

177

man of the future, he shows a proportionate want of
refined feeling. On the contrary, he thereby merely
urges us to acknowledge the consistent quality of his
philosophy, and it is only when we come to his more
extended definition of good and bad conduct that we
are led to doubt even that quality.

It will be remembered that, overlooking his own very
strict principle that the survival of the fittest does not
necessarily imply the survival of the more desirable, in
any respect (if we give this word anything like its
ordinary meaning) — and, therefore, that the course of
evolution, followed by a species, does not of necessity
mean an ascent or an improvement, he states his moral
principles more definitely as follows : —

" The conduct to which we apply the name good, is
the relatively more evolved conduct; and bad is the
name we apply to conduct which is relatively less
evolved."*

The inconsistency here requires no comment.

Be all this as it may, Spencer and Nietzsche are, in
some details, so very much alike, and each, in his way,
was gifted with such extraordinary mental powers,
that I should have been loath to juxtapose them here
in such sharp contrast, were it not for Nietzsche's own
tribute to our great philosopher, wherewith he practic-
ally suggests a comparison.

In the Genealogy of Morals, you remember, he says,
after having reviewed other systems of ethics and found
them worthless: " How much more reasonable is Mr

* Data of Ethics, p. 25.

M

178

Nietzsche

Herbert Spencer's theory," and although he cannot
sanction it, he adds: — " it is at least reasonable and
psychologically tenable."*

We have seen why he could not sanction Spencer's
moral philosophy; in the first place, because its prin-
ciple was so general that it promised to rear no very
definite type, and therefore revealed a total want of
taste; secondly, because the very nebulous hints of the
ideal to which it might attain, betray a taste so essenti-
ally opposed to his, that to accept it meant to join the
ranks of his worst enemies — the decadents, f

Turning from these considerations in order to consult
Nietzsche's moral philosophy, let us see what it is he
says.

He who knew and remembered that the law of the
" survival of the fittest " is no guarantee that a desir-
able type (in his sense) will ultimately survive, provided
the values by which it progresses be values of decadence
and degeneration, gives us the code with which he
would rear his ideal man, the moral code which leads
his way, expresses his taste, and accords with his read-
ing of the face of Nature.

" What is good? — All that increases the feeling of
power, will for power, power itself in man.

" What is bad? — All that proceeds from weakness.

" What is happiness? — The feeling that power in-
creases— that resistance is overcome.

" Not contentedness, but more power; not peace at
any price, but warfare, not virtue, but capacity (virtue
* G.M., p. 20. t C.W., p. 202.

The Moralist

179

in the Renaissance style, virtu, virtue free from any
moralic acid).

"The weak and ill-constituted shall perish: first
principle of our charity. And people shall help them to
do so.

" What is more injurious than any crime? — Practical
sympathy for all the ill-constituted and weak — Christi-
anity."*

This is the morality of power, of healthy life, of
Optimism, with which Nietzsche wished to make his
ideal man paramount. It is the antithesis of everything
we think we are most certain about to-day; it is the
antithesis, perhaps, of everything we are most uncertain
about to-day.

Its author partly divined the kind of reception moral
values of this stamp would receive at the hands of the
effeminate manhood of Europe. He was prepared to be
reviled; he foresaw the host of misunderstandings to
which his code would probably give rise. And, indeed,
the agitation of the herds, and the fright of the various
bell-wethers, soon found violent expression. In the
third part of Thus Spake Zarathustra we see that he
had anticipated the most likely form their attack
would take.

" O my brethren," he cries, " say, am I cruel? But I
say : What is about to fall, shall even be pushed.

" The all of to-day — it falleth, it decayeth. Who
would keep it ? But I — I will push it down besides !

" Know ye the voluptuousness that rolleth stones
* C.W., p. 242.

i8o

Nietzsche

into steep depths? These men of to-day — look at them,
how they roll into my depth!

" A prelude I am of better players, O my brethren!
An example. Act after mine example!

" And him you do not teach to fly, teach — how to
fall more quickly! "*

To see through the smug and miserable humbug of
the present, the humbug that still rejoices in a clean
conscience, and put an end to it ; that is what he would
have us do.

But, in the first place, let us be quite clear as to who
it is who is really selfish and cruel, which morality
actually contains the values of cruelty and brutality —
Nietzsche's or the Christian's?

Often enough has his been lightly credited with
them, and by men who ought to know better. Any
man's criticism is, however, only a comment, a side-
light, on himself. When somebody tells us that he dis-
likes Strauss or Raeger, we hear nothing which may
either destroy or confirm our opinion of these two
musicians ; but we certainly receive a very broad hint
in regard to the character, taste and education of the
man expressing the opinion. Likewise, when Mr
Chesterton rashly asserts that Nietzsche preaches
egoism, f we receive no real information concerning
Nietzsche, we are, rather misinformed; but, we are
given a valuable comment on Mr Chesterton himself,
and that is, that he has neither read Nietzsche carefully
nor troubled to understand the little he did read of him.

* Z ., " Of Old and New Tables, " IT 20. f " Orthodoxy," p. 65.

The Moralist

181

As I was saying, Nietzsche's morality has often
enough been credited with the values of egoism ; and,
indeed, after cursorily examining the matter, nothing
could seem more glaringly obvious — more self-evident
(more especially to a superficial reader), than that the
table of morals he gives us panders to the selfish in-
stincts of mankind.

On inquiring into the question a little more pro-
foundly, however, we may be surprised to find the case
somewhat different from what we at first expected it to
be.

According to our ideas, the desirable life of a shrub,
a tree, or a breed of dogs, is maintained only by a pro-
cess of selection and sacrifice. Our process is more de-
liberate, not perhaps so stealthy and haphazard as
Nature's; we sacrifice the individual for the ideal we
have of the family : we sacrifice the family for our ideal
of the species, and often we have annihilated the species
for our ideal of the genus.

The gardener prunes the fruit and rose trees. He
has an ideal tree in his mind, to which he strives to
make the trees under his care attain ; therefore he is an
enemy of all frail, sickly and degenerate members.
The dog-breeder drowns the sickly individuals among
a litter of puppies. If the number be excessive for the
bitch, and he can find no fester-mother, he sacrifices
even promising young dogs, for the sake of the ideal
dog-family, which he has in his mind. Life — desir-
able Life — demands sacrifice, and not sacrifice for a
metaphysical point, but, more often, for a physical one.

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Nietzsche

Unconsciously, the ancient Greeks practised this
principle with the greatest possible severity.

Their ideal man was the man of spirit and combative-
ness; hence their life was a constant war; even their
recreations were strenuous struggles — even their con-
versations were disputes.

" The humble man of the Christian," says Mr Bury,
" would have been considered a vicious and contempt-
ible person by Aristotle, who put forward the man of
great spirit as the man of virtue."*

Sacrifice — the conscious self-sacrifice for an ideal,
which we are now discussing — cannot of course be
numbered among the Greek concepts. They were, first
of all, men of action and spirited action. But we must
not forget that it is possible for an activity which is
quite unconscious to achieve a result which a conscious
artistic effort could only approximate. We must re-
member that a peacock may excel the greatest master
of deportment that the world has ever known, in the
way it deports itself.

Unconscious artists, then, these Greeks merely vented
a pressure within them, which craved expression of
some sort ; that this pressure led to heroism and valiant
deeds of self-sacrifice was just as incidental to their
purpose as the voluptuous grace of a tiger is to his act
of walking, or to his crouch before he springs. Their
purpose, above all, was to rid themselves of their super-
fluous spirit. It is not sufficiently understood yet, that
all real artists, whether they paint, sing, write or com-

* History of the Later Roman Empire, Vol. I. p. 23.

The Moralist

183

pose, are, in the first place, men of superabundant
energy, whose first and foremost desire in life, is to dis-
charge that energy. The real artist is not so from choice.
The charm we derive from his work, is purely, or ought
to be purely incidental. This was the case with the
Greeks. Seeking above all to discharge their overflowing
energy, life itself became a secondary — a tertiary —
consideration with them. Hence their heroism which
delights and fires us. That we should now see an ideal
in it, which was worth striving after, is very natural.
But we must not forget that the ideal was only un-
consciously pursued by them.

Some painters say, " observe and interpret masses of
form and colour, masses of light and shade, the line and
definition of your picture will then evolve of themselves. "
That some of us, on regarding a picture produced in
this way, should imagine that the line and definition in
it are the result of the artist's conscious effort, is com-
prehensible enough. The end achieved is too often con-
founded with the means employed in achieving it. The
Greeks were not heroes from choice; — they were un-
conscious, artistic heroes. Forgetting the worth of life
in deeds of heroism, owing to the fact that they were
concerned only with the still greater worth of perform-
ing what were to them natural and necessary actions,
they give us at least the picture of a people striving
cheerfully after lofty and spirited ideals.

When we have understood that these ideals were
merely incidental, we have not thereby reduced the
beauty of the deed, we have made it a thousand times,

184

Nietzsche

more beautiful: — for what could be more beautiful
than unconscious beauty?

It is only when we descend to a state of effete culture,
or to a state of mixed hopes and conflicting aims, in
which spirit has to be summoned, marshalled and
gathered, that we can begin to talk of conscious hero-
ism and conscious self-sacrifice. And although to-day
we still have a vestige of the old unconscious ideal left,
still, we are living at a time when ideals must be con-
sciously striven after, and in which heroes must mostly
be exhorted.

Nietzsche realised the necessity of a modern Petei
the Hermit. He saw that the ideal race to which the
Greeks unconsciously attained, and which made them
the greatest artists the world has ever had, as their
sculpture is with us to prove, — he saw that this ideal of
race must be deliberately striven after to-day, there
must be a deliberate mustering, marshalling and direct-
ing of forces, a conscious pruning, suppression and
elimination of weakness, until, in the course of several
generations, those qualities which must now be willed,
become incorporated and instinctive; until they be-
come as unconscious as they were in the ancient Greeks,
and thus acquire that purity and stability which
characterise unconscious beauty alone.

This principle of Nietzsche's, which, if we banish
squeamish prejudices, we know to be our principle also,
is simply the old time-honoured law, that some one,
some few must suffer, if an ideal race is to be attained
to at all,

The Moralist

185

In their ancient doctrine of mysteries, the Greeks
actually pronounced pain holy. Pain to them, was
sanctified in general by the pains of childbirth. All be-
coming and growing, all promise of life, by analogy,
seemed to require the halo of pain. Suffering was not
feared as we fear it to-day; it was not considered an
evil; — it seemed, rather, a necessity of promising life,
as much as pleasure itself.*

Now, how does the so-called altruistic morality of
Christianity face these questions? In the first place, as
Mr Bury says, " Christianity emphasised the privileges,
hopes and fears of the individual, Christ died for each
man."t

" ' Immortality ' granted to every Tom, Dick and
Harry, has hitherto been the worst, the most vicious
outrage on noble humanity — and let us not underesti-
mate the calamity which, proceeding from Christianity,
has insinuated itself even into politics. At present
nobody has any longer the courage for separate rights,
for rights of domination, for a feeling of reverence for
himself and his equals, — for pathos of distance. J And
yet Christianity owes its triumph to this pitiable flattery
of personal vanity, — it has thereby enticed over to its
side all the ill-constituted, the seditiously-disposed, the
ill-fortuned, the whole scum and dross of humanity.
' Salvation of the soul ' — means, in plain words, ' the
world revolves around me.' "§

* C.W., p. 230. See also remarks on Hedonism in the second
paper.

t History of the Later Roman Empire, Vol. I. p. 33.

+ C. VV., pp. 306, 307. § Ibid., p 306.

i86

Nietzsche

The heroic ideal is thus maimed and practically done
away with. " I and my soul," become all-important —
an ideal race is a minor matter, the whole kind gets the
upper hand.

Mr Bury actually goes so far as to attribute the dis-
integration of the Roman Empire, partly to this bane-
ful centralisation of interests in each individual, to the
extinction of an ideal of manhood on earth.

Every human creature that succeeds in rilling his
lungs with air, be he botched or beautiful, sick or
sound, becomes sanctified through this preservative
notion of " soul," and must be maintained, — even
though an ideal of race ultimately becomes impossible,
even though mankind ultimately assumes the appear-
ance of the collected patients of all the world's hospitals
and infirmaries, — even though the noble plantsget stifled
under the matted mass of tares that grow about them.

As a matter of fact, however, Christianity knows no
tares. The word was once used metaphorically by the
Founder of the Creed ; but its application to humanity
seems to have become obsolete. No, — every sprout is a
noble plant, — every blade must be nurtured, fostered
and pampered, until the healthy begin to doubt
whether it is right or even holy to be as they are; till
everyone is either an invalid or an invalid's attendant,
until the human world becomes, as we see it to-day,
more than two-thirds botched, patched and bungled.

This is genuine selfishness ; this is selfishness caught
napping — or else nothing is right, nothing is true,
nothing is worth while,

The Moralist

187

The sacrifice of the ideal type for the soul of the indi-
vidual; the sacrifice of the ideal genus for the motley
species : that is what is aimed at and achieved to-day,
and who doubts that this is the method sanctioned —
nay, recommended, by the Christian Church?

Formerly, the heroic ideal was, that sacrifice is a
worthy deed, when performed for the ideal of one's
race or genus. Christianity not only altered the motive
of the deed, by offering a post-mortem reward for it ;
but, in the narrow Christian view, even the deed itself
shrank, and became an action of pity for one's neigh-
bour, of love for one's friends.

Schopenhauer consistently made pity the greatest
virtue; but, obviously only because his philosophy
denied life and was thoroughly nihilistic.

To-day, pain must, above all things, be avoided; the
individual must survive; the ideal race is a secondary,
a minor — in any case — a much less significant — factor
in life. We are all alike before God.

" And base things of the world, and things which are
despised has God chosen; yea, and things which are
not, to bring to nought things that are."

Nietzsche's teaching was called egoism; — by how
many, I wonder, who understood this passage: —

" Uncommon is the highest virtue, and of little use;
shining it is and chaste in its splendour: a giving virtue
is the highest virtue.

" Verily, I believe I have found you out, my dis-
ciples : ye seek, like me, after a given virtue. ... Ye
compel all things to come unto you and into you, in

i88

Nietzsche

order that they may flow back from your well as gifts
of your love.

" Verily such a giving love must become a robber as
regardeth all values ; but I call that selfishness healthy
and holy.

" There is another selfishness, a very poor one, a
starving one which ever seeketh to steal; the selfishness
of the sickly, sickly selfishness.

" With a thief's eye it looketh at all that glittereth;
with the crowing of hunger it measureth him who hath
plenty to eat ; and it ever stealeth round the table of
givers.

" Disease speaketh in that craving, and invisible
degeneration; of a sick body speaketh the thief-like
craving of that selfishness.

"Tell me, my brethren : what regard we as the bad and
the worst thing ? Is it not degeneration ? — And we always
suspect degeneration wherever the giving soul is lacking.

" Upwards goeth our way, from species to super-
species. But a horror for us is the degenerating mind
which saith: ' All for myself! *

The sick and impotent man, in Nietzsche's opinion,
is the one who must, of necessity, be selfish, and must be
unjustifiably so. He has nought to give; he must take
from the sound and the powerful if he wish to maintain
himself. Giving, when it is compatible with the survival
of the giver, means superabundance. " The excess of
power only, is the proof of power, "f

The Greeks, the natural artists, giving from super-

* Z., * ' Of the Giving Virtue." t C.W., p. 97.

The Moralist 189

abundance, because they must give or choke, this is
Nietzsche's notion of giving.

The fulness of life, overflowing life, is distinctly con-
ducive to the act of giving ; in fact, Nietzsche does not
think it at all impossible that even the custom of sacri-
ficial offerings may partly have arisen from the desire
to bestow, which superfluity provokes. " A proud
people needs a God in order to sacrifice," he suggests.*

What seem to be strains of pure egoism, certainly do
run through Nietzsche's teaching; but let us hear his
own words upon the matter: —

" Selfishness," he says, " has as much value as the
physiological value of him who possesses it : it may be
very valuable, or it may be vile and contemptible. Each
individual may be looked at with respect to whether he
represents an ascending or a descending line of life.
When that is determined we have a canon for the
valuation of his selfishness. If he represents the ascent
of the line of life, his value is in fact very great — and on
account of the collective life which in him makes a
further step, the concern about his maintenance, about
providing his optimum of conditions, may even be
extreme. ... If he represents descending development,
decay, chronic degeneration, or sickening, he has little
worth [his egoism then amounts to the will to maintain
his kind, therefore to the will to degeneration] and the
greatest fairness would have him take away as little as
possible from the well-constituted. He is then no more
than a parasite, "f

* C.w., P. 258. t C.W.,PP. 192, 193.

190

Nietzsche

What could be more rational, more true to experi-
ence, more self-evident to all who have thought upon
this matter?

And is it supposed that an egoist wrote these
words?: —

" Thus willeth the tribe of noble souls: they wish not
to have anything for nothing, least of all life.

" Whoever is of the mob, will live for nothing. But
we others unto whom life gave itself, — we are wonder-
ing what we shall best give in return !

" And verily, this is a noble speech, that saith:
' The promises life maketh unto us, we shall keep ! '

" One shall not wish to enjoy one's self where one
doth not give enjoyment."*

Not egoism, but broad, grand altruism, is the kernel
of Nietzsche's philosophy. In wishing to disabuse our
minds of the illusion that our petty unselfishness,
gentleness, and pity are of any real worth; in crying:
" Alas, where in the world have greater follies happened
than with the pitiful. And what in the world hath done
more harm than the follies of the pitiful; "f he certainly
led the superficial to suppose that selfishness was the
aim and mainspring of his teaching.

But, he says in this respect, we are all too short-
sighted, and living, as it were, too much from day to
day. The far-sighted one sees greater and more
weighty duties than the love of his neighbour. The
generation of the future, their health and their welfare
press heavily upon him, and he is terribly conscious of

• Z. , " Of Old and New Tables, IT 5. f Z., " Of the Pitiful."

The Moralist

the responsibility which he and others share in shaping
them.

" Do I counsel you to love your neighbour? I rather
counsel you to flee from your neighbour and to love the
most remote.

" Love unto the most remote future man, is higher
than love unto your neighbour.

"It is the more remote [your children and your
children's children] who pay for your love unto your
neighbour.*

" Your children's land ye shall love (be this love your
new nobility!), the land undiscovered in the remotest
sea ! For it I bid your sails seek and seek !

"In your children ye shall make amends for being
your father's children. Thus ye shall redeem all that is
past! This new table I put over you! "f

But, for this ideal of Nietzsche's, we must be harder
and more tenacious than we are. The weakness of our
present sentiments must reveal its folly to us, and, if
we have the far-sighted gaze, we must see that it is
dangerous folly. I have already spoken, somewhat at
length, on this question of hardness. I tried to show, in
opposition to Mr Chesterton, that it was precisely the
prerequisite of an oligarchy, in which commanders are
commanders from force of temperament and character.
All of you who have tried at one time or other to com-
mand others, even if these others have been but little
children, must have learned how completely and utterly

* Z., " Of Love for One's Neighbour."
t Z., " Of Old and New Tables," If 12.

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Nietzsche

you first had to gain command over yourselves. How
you first had to control your heart in its sympathy,
your greater wisdom and the anger that it often helped
to kindle in you, your hand and mouth in their froward-
ness, and your eyes which will persist in seeing too
much. This initial hardness, this first stage of hardness
which constitutes the attitude towards oneself, only, —
what is it compared with the ultimate hardness which
is requisite for commanding individuals, often refrac-
tory, to march along roads of which you, alone, know
the end and direction? — what is it compared with the
hardness that overlooks an isolated case, however de-
serving of attention, whenever that isolated case threa-
tens to arrest the general grand march you are leading.

This hardness, we are fast losing to-day. Softer and
more degenerate qualities are taking its place, and pity
is the coping-stone of them all. Pity — that attitude
towards our fellow-creatures, which, as you know, all
of us, individually resent most bitterly, when it is
directed at us; pity which makes us recoil when it is
breathed upon us even by our best friend ; — this is the
quality which is fast becoming the greatest virtue
amongst us ; it was, as we saw in the last lecture, the
device upon the shields of all slaves, invalids and
pygmies. With it they elevated themselves. We feel
there is something debasing in it. Whatever we may say
in its support, we know it is ignoble — or, if we don't,
why, pray, do all those amongst us who have any taste
for courage, independence and nobility of spirit, resent
and resist it with all our might ?

The Moralist

193

" Alas, where in the world have greater follies
happened than with the pitiful ! " Nietzsche cries : "And
what in the world hath done more harm than the follies
of the pitiful?"*

" What is more injurious than any crime? " he asks.
" Practical sympathy for all the ill-constituted and
weak — Christianity. "

That we may be fit to found Nietzsche's society, he
would perforce have us harder.

" Ye higher men, think ye that I live to make well
what ye made badly?

" Or think ye that I meant to pillow you sufferers
more comfortably for the future ? Or to show new and
easier footpaths unto you restless, gone astray on roads
and mountains? Nay! Nay! Three times Nay! Ever
more, ever better ones of your tribes shall perish. For
ye shall have ever a worse and harder life. Only thus —

" Only thus man groweth up unto that height where
the lightning striketh and breaketh him ; high enough
for the lightning !

" Towards few things, towards long things, towards
remote things, my mind and my longing turn. What
concern hath your petty, manifold short misery for me !

" Ye do not yet suffer enough! For ye suffer from
yourselves, ye have never yet suffered from man.

" Ye would lie, did ye say otherwise! None of you
suffereth from what I have suffered/'f

In a race, like ours, in which changes are slow to
show themselves, in which the life of one individual is

* Z., " Of the Pitiful." f Z., " Of Higher Man," f 6.

N

i94

Nietzsche

not long enough for him to perceive even the dawn of
effects which he has done his utmost to cause, there is a
great danger, which attacks the shallow more especially ;
that of losing hope, and of seeking consolation in im-
mediate advantages, alone, to the ruin and destruction
of remoter and greater advantages. Nietzsche knew
this and therefore he cries: " Alas I have known noble
ones who have lost their highest hope. And then they
slandered all high hopes. But by my love and hope, I
conjure thee, throw not away the hero in thy soul!
Keep holy thy highest hope! "*

It ought to be clear now, that his preaching of the
Gospel of hardness, is no idle satisfaction of a cruel lust
in his nature ; it is rather the action of one who would
help us to fight our way up to a more dignified type.

" When ye despise what is agreeable and a soft bed,
and know not how to make your bed far enough from
the effeminate: then is the origin of your virtue. "f

" Zarathustra was a friend of all such as make dis-
tant voyages and like not to live without danger. "J

For this hardness; for this will to love only one's
children's land, we must first of all develop a will. The
lack of will, and the disease of it, where it does exist, is
at the bottom of our effeminacy in Europe to-day.

We must learn the firmness of purpose which dis-
tinguishes good commanders, or the intelligence and
honesty to admit that we can be but followers.

Those who cannot command must seek their signifi-

* Z. , «' Of the Tree on the Hill."

f Z., "Of the Giving Virtue."

X Z. , » Of the Vision and the Riddle."

The Moralist

195

cance in obeying. Freedom, like everything else, is only
good relatively. Freedom is an instrument that requires
to be used by a skilled hand.

" Thou callest thyself free? . . .

" Art thou such a one as to be permitted to escape a
yoke ? Many there are who threw away everything they
were worth when they threw away their servitude.

" Free from what? How should that concern Zara-
thustra? Clearly thine eye shall answer: free for what.

" Canst thou give thyself thine evil and thy good,
hanging thy will above thee as a law? Canst thou be
thine own judge and the avenger of thine own law?

" Terrible it is to be alone with the judge and
avenger of one's own law."*

The promises we make unto ourselves, we must
learn to keep. If we cannot keep our word to our-
selves, how shall we hope to be commanders? We are
then only followers still. Self-command is the first step
of all commanding. " Many a one can give rules to him-
self [and make lofty resolutions]; but there lacketh
much in his obeying them! "f

" Oh, that ye understood my word: 1 Be sure to do
whatever ye like, — but first of all be such as can will !' "$

With the future of mankind, alone, in our minds,
with the possibility of Superman earnestly and com-
pletely realised, we unconsciously project our gaze over
and beyond the heads of our fellows. Our purpose lies
somewhere behind our present horizon; we must be

* Z. , "Of the Way of the Creator."
t Z., " Of Old and New Tables," IT 4.
X Z., "Of the Belittling Virtue."

196

Nietzsche

brave and patient sailors. The thought of our neighbour
is a temptation, a magnet, threatening to draw our
purpose sideways; true altruism bids us banish our
fawning neighbour from our thoughts.

Such a purpose, with the means it exacts, will de-
velop those qualities in us which will ultimately
lead us to regard our present hypersensitiveness and
readiness to re-act to the slightest stimulus, as con-
ditions of disease, as states of sickness.

We must cease asking ourselves what we would be
free from; our question must be: what would we be
free for?

" Beyond-man is my care; with me, he and not
man is the first and only thing. Not the neighbour, nor
the poorest one, not the greatest sufferer, not the best
one.

" O my brethren, what I can love in man, is that he
is a transition and destruction, and even in you there
are many things that make me love and hope.

" For to-day, the petty folk have become master.
They all preach submission and resignation and policy
Lnd diligence and regard and the long etcetera of petty
virtues.

" These ask, and ask, and weary not with asking:
" How doth man preserve himself best, longest and

most agreeably? Thereby they are the masters of to-day.

Surpass these masters of to-day, O my brethren, the

petty folk. They are the greatest danger for Superman !
" Surpass, ye higher men, the petty virtues, the

petty policies, the grains-of-sand-regards, the swarm-

The Moralist

197

ing of ants, the smug ease, the happiness of the greatest
number! "*

Now, perhaps, we are beginning to see more clearly
into Nietzsche's so-called egoism. We no longer
shudder at the apparent hardness of his words ; his in-
clemency becomes austerity, his love for mankind
appears grander and deeper than ours. His severity is
really the noblest compassion.

We know now what he means when he says: —
" Unto the incurable, one shall not go to be physician.
But more courage is requisite for making an end than
for making a new verse. That is known unto all
physicians and poets, "f

" Life is hard to bear. But do not pretend to be so
frail. . . . What have we in common with the rose-bud
that trembleth because a drop of dew lieth on its body ?J

" What is good? — All that increases the feeling of
power, will to power, power itself, in man.

" What is bad? — All that proceeds from weakness."

We now see the necessity of these words, we now see
how inevitable they are, if we are to achieve Nietzsche's
ideal.

" There is no harder lot in all human fate, than when
the powerful of the earth are not at the same time the
first men. There everything becometh false and warped
and monstrous.§

" For my brethren what is best shall rule; what is

* Z., '-Of Higher Man," IT 3.

t Z., " Of Old and New Tables," IT 17.

t Z., " Of Reading and Writing."

§ Z., "Of the Conversation with the Kings," H I.

Nietzsche

best will rule! And where the teaching soundeth
different, the best is lacking."*

With this new table reigning, Nietzsche assures us
that things will be more cheerful, more tasteful, on
earth. Man's smile will no longer be spasmodically
checked and turned to a grimace when he bows his head
to glance at his fellows and their lot. Pain the inevit-
able concomitant of all becoming, of all birth, will be
accepted as a necessary factor in existence. The scurry
to avoid it will cease, and man will halt at his Noon, at
his Great Mid-day, in order to scan the land of his child
— the Superman, which will lie remotely on the horizon
— bright in the glow of the afternoon sun.

Perhaps this ideal seems vain, over-strained —
dreamy? It may even raise a laugh among those who
have perhaps never observed the changes that are
possible, even in a single life, if high ideals, instead of
base ones, are striven after.

But Nietzsche does not tell you to expect the realisa-
tion of your ideal to-morrow or the next day. Hesays: —

"Not yourselves, perhaps my brethren! But ye
could create yourselves into fathers and fore-fathers of
Superman, and let this be your best creating, "f

" What hath hitherto been the greatest sin on earth?
Was it not the word of him who said : ' Woe unto those
who laugh here? '

" Did he himself find no reasons for laughing on earth?
If so, he sought but ill. A child findeth reasons here.J

* Z., "Of Old and New Tables," IT 21.
t Z., " On the Blissful Islands." % Z., " Of Higher Man," IT 16.

The Moralist

199

" This crown of laughter, the crown of rose- wreaths
— I myself have put this crown on my head ; I myself
have proclaimed my laughter holy. No other I found
to-day strong enough for that.*

" Since man came into existence, he hath had too j
little joy. That alone, my brethren, is our original sin !f '

" How many things are still possible! Learn, I pray,
to laugh beyond yourselves ! Raise your hearts, ye good
dancers, high! higher! And forget not the good laughter!

" This crown of laughter, the crown of rose-wreaths
— unto you, my brethren, I throw this crown! The
laughter I have proclaimed holy. Ye higher men, learn
how to laugh! "J

# Z., " Of Higher Man," IF 18. f Z., « Of the Pitiful."

t Z., " Of Higher Man," If 20.

THE END

WW

WORKS OF
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

First complete and authorised English Translation
in 1 8 volumes, edited by Dr OSCAR LEVY

I. THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.

Translated by William A. Haussmann, B.A., Ph.D., with Bio-
graphical Introduction by the Author's Sister, Portrait and
Facsimile. Cr 8vo, 230 pp. , is. 6d. net. Second Edition.

One of the most discussed of Nietzsche's works, full of sparkling
thoughts and new ideas concerning the Greek drama, Goethe,
modern music, etc.

II. EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHY, AND

OTHER ESSAYS.
Translated by M. A. Miigge, Ph.D. Cr 8vo, 3^. 6d. net.
Essays on Greek Philosophy, the Greek State, the Greek Woman,
Music and Word, Truthfulness and Untruthfulness, etc.

III. THE FUTURE OF OUR EDUCATIONAL

INSTITUTIONS.
Translated by J. M. Kennedy. Cr 8vo, is. 6d. net. Second Ed.
A series of lectures on modern European educational establish-
ments, with a comparison with those of ancient civilisation, and
suggestions for their improvement.

IV. THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON, Vol. I.

Translated by A. M. Ludovici, with Editorial Note and General
Introduction to the Series. Cr 8vo, is. 6d. net. Third Edition.
The essay on David Strauss is a protest against the pseudo-
culture of Germany, and the second essay is a complete analysis
of Wagner's character and abilities as man, musician, philosopher,
and writer.

V. THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON, Vol. II.
Translated by Adrian Collins, M. A. Cr8vo, is. 6d. net. SecondEd.
The essay on history is a se\ ere indictment of the over- valuation
of history. The essay on Schopenhauer was written to protect
the great pessimist from the attacks of narrow-minded critics

and to set him up as an antidote to Hegel.

VI. HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN, Vol. I.

Translated by Helen Zimmern, with Introduction by J. M.
Kennedy. Cr 8vo, 55. net. Second Edition.

This book brought its author into the forefront of modern
thought. It is specially noteworthy as his first attack against
the morality of modern Europe.

OTHER NIETZSCHEAN LITERATURE

WORKS OF FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

continued

VII. HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN, Vol. II.
Translated, with Introduction, by Paul V. Cohn, B.A. $s. net.
Nietzsche has cast off the fetters of Wagner and Schopenhauer,
and is beginning to find himself. The book consists of hundreds
of finely-chiselled aphorisms, many of which, like those on
Milton, Laurence Sterne, and Shakespeare, are interesting to all

English readers.

VIII. THE CASE OF WAGNER.

Translated by A. M. Ludovici. Cr 8 vo , 3*. 6d. net. Third Edition.
These two pamphlets consist of Nietzsche's criticism of all that
Wagnerism meant. They are not an attack on Wagner the
man, but on Wagnerism and the Wagnerite, as symptoms of
the ill-health and degeneracy of modern Art and modern Life.
This volume likewise contains a collection of aphorisms entitled
"We Philologists," in which Nietzsche attacks modern classical
education.

IX. THE DAWN OF DAY.

Translated, with Introduction, by J. M. Kennedy. 408 pp. , $s. net.
Music, art, sociology, Christianity, and Indian philosophy are a
few of the subjects treated in this book, which is most important
as containing a lucid explanation of Nietzsche's theories on race
questions. There is also to be found in it one of the most
masterly pieces of criticism that Nietzsche ever penned, viz., the
long analysis of the character of the Apostle Paul.

*X. THE JOYFUL WISDOM.

Translated, with Introduction, by Thomas Common. Cr 8vo,
350 pp. , ss- net.

This book shows traces of mental exuberance and depth of pene-
tration unusual even for Nietzsche. The fourth book, entitled
"Sanctus Januarius," and the fifth, entitled "We Fearless Ones,"
contain some of the maturest wisdom of Nietzsche, expressed in
a most tender and delicate form.

*XI. THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA.

Revised Translation by T. Common, with Introduction by Mrs
Foerster-Nietzsche, and Commentary by A. M. Ludovici. Cr
8vo, 490 pp. , 6s. net. Third Edition.

An entirely new translation of this celebrated book, in which the
constructive element of Nietzsche's philosophy begins to appear,
containing the fourth section of the work, which is little known
to English readers.

OTHER NIETZSCHEAN LITERATURE

WORKS OF FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

continued

t. *XII. BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.

Translated by Helen Zimmern, with Introduction by T. Common.
Cr 8vo, 276 pp. , 2s- net- Third Edition.

One of the most characteristic and most brilliant of the works of
Nietzsche, containing aphorisms, principally on the morality of
different races and nations, explaining the great distinction be-
tween master and slave morality, and developing some of the
ideas of the Zarathustra.

L XIII. THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

Translated by Horace B. Samuel, M.A. Qr 8vo, 3s. 6d. net,
232 pp. Second Edition.

Contains Nietzsche's celebrated exposition of the origin of sin
and punishment and the gradual development of the theory of
original sin, leading up to a severe denunciation of Christian
morality.

t. XIV. THE WILL TO POWER, Vol. I.

Translated by A. M. Ludovici. Cr 8vo, 55. net. Third Edition.
The two volumes of "The Will to Power" were destined to be
Nietzsche's greatest theoretical and philosophical prose work,
which, unfortunately, was never completed by its author. The
criticism of Religion and Morality found in this volume gives a
proof of Nietzsche's tolerant attitude towards Christianity, which
he wished not to eradicate, but to keep within its proper limits
as a religion for the people.

*XV. THE WILL TO POWER, Vol. II.

Translated by A. M. Ludovici. Cr 8vo, $s. net. Second Edition.
This contains Nietzsche's view of Science. The first part of this
volume contains Nietzsche's research into the "Will to Power
in Nature," and has from the date of its appearance aroused the
interest of many men of science. The second half of this volume
is one of the most valuable productions of Nietzsche, containing,
as it does, his views on breeding and discipline, eugenics and
race-regeneration. Chapters are devoted to Dionysus and the
Eternal Recurrence.

*XVI. THE TWILIGHT OF IDOLS, THE ANTI-
CHRIST, ETERNAL RECURRENCE.
Translated by A. M. Ludovici. Cr 8vo, 300 pp. , 5J. net.
In "The Twilight of the Idols" Nietzsche's dexterity in com-
bating European Degeneracy reaches its zenith. "All those,"
he says, ' ' who desire to obtain a rapid sketch of how everything,
before my time, was standing on its head, should begin reading
me in this book." In the "Antichrist" Nietzsche tenders his,
that is to say, the Higher Man's, ultimatum to Christianity.

OTHER NIETZSCHEAN LITERATURE

WORKS OF FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

continued

*XVII. ECCE HOMO AND POETRY.

Translated by A. M. Ludovici. Poetry rendered by Dr G. T.
Wrench, Francis Bickley, Herman Scheffauer. Cr 8vo, 6s. net.
This is the famous autobiography. Told with a clearness and a
lucidity which is classic, it is the story of single-handed fight
against the romantic idealism which the author encountered in
such overwhelming force in the world about him. It was with-
held from publication for twenty years in Germany, owing to its
strong anti-German attitude.

XVIII. SUPPLEMENTARY ESSAYS
AND INDEX.
By Robert Guppy. Cr 8vo, 450 pp. , 6s. net.
This is a very exhaustive index, such as is even at present want-
ing in the French and German editions of Nietzsche. It contains
nearly 400 pages of matter. Added to this index is a translation
of every foreign word or phrase occurring in the seventeen
volumes of the edition by Mr Paul V. Cohn, B.A. The whole
is preceded by an introductory essay by the Editor : ' ' The
Nietzsche Movement in England — a Retrospect, a Confession,
a Prospect."

•* Nietzsche was a great poet, a great musician, a great scholar, and
a great philosopher. He took from every part of culture, and everything
he touched was shaped and animated by his tremendous personality.
He lived as he wrote — heroically. His life, after his boyhood, was a
long battle with pain, but he never wavered. He worked on until his
brain gave way, worn out at last by his indomitable spirit ; and his
work has opened out the possibilities of man's life as widely and as
surely as the work of anyone who has ever lived. It is a benefit to the
community that his work has at length been translated into the English
language." — The Observer

* These Volumes— X., XI, XII., XV., XVI, and XVII— may be
strongly recommended as containing the qui?ilesse?ice 0/ Nietzsche,
headers are advised not to approach " Thus Spake Zarathustra " until
after a perusal of the other volumes.

OTHER NIETZSCHEAN LITERATURE

THE RENAISSANCE
By COUNT ARTHUR DE GOBINEAU

With 20 Illustrations
Translated by Paul V. Cohn, with an Introductory

Essay on Count Gobineau's Life and Work,
by Dr Oscar Levy

16s.
(Heinemann)

These five historical dramas cover the flowering-time of
the Italian Renaissance from the rise to prominence of
Savonarola (1492) to the last days of Michael Angelo (about
1 560). While grouped round the leading figures who provide
the titles — Savonarola, Cesare Borgia, Julius II., Leo X., and
Michael Angelo— the plays introduce almost every interesting
character of the period. Nor are we only concerned with
the great names : the author aims at catching the spirit of
the people, and the thoughts and feelings of soldier, artisan,
trader, and their womenfolk find ample voice in his pages.

The Italian Renaissance is an epoch of peculiar interest
to English readers, not least because of its profound in-
fluence on our own Elizabethan age. It is perhaps the
most many-sided period in history : even fifth-century Greece
scarcely contributed so much — or at any rate so much that
has survived— to the world of politics, art, and thought.
Now while this interest is amply reflected in contemporary
literature, from the monumental work of Symonds down to
the flotsam and jetsam of everyday fiction, there is one kind
of man who more than an historian would show insight into
this age, and that is a poet.

It is as a poet's work that Gobineau's " Historical Scenes "
recommend themselves to the public. But there are many
kinds of poets : there is the religious and moral kind, there
is the irreligious and sub-moral kind, and there is the super-
religious and super-moral kind. Only the last-named can
understand, can feel, can sympathise with such mighty
figures as Cesare Borgia and Julius II. — the religious
poet being inclined to paint them as monsters, the sub-
religious as freaks and neurotics. Similia simili&us : equals
can only be recognised by their equals, and Gobineau was

OTHER NIETZSCHEAN LITERATURE

THE RENAISSANCE— continued

himself a type of the Renaissance flung by destiny into an age
of low bourgeois and socialist ideals. In a century swayed
by romanticism and democracy, Gobineau was a classic and
an aristocrat. He is a forerunner of Nietzsche ("the only
European spirit I should care to converse with," said
Nietzsche of him in a letter), and as such is peculiarly fitted
to deal with one of the few periods that was not dominated
by the moral law. For this reason Gobineau cannot fail to
attract the large and ever-growing circle of students of
Nietzsche in this country and America.

" I can only add that this is a volume of serious import, worth reading from
cover to cover, a book which even a jaded reviewer closes with a sigh of regret
that he has not got to read it all over again." — G. S. Lavard in the Bookman.

" No book that we can recall tells so vividly and in such brilliant style the
story of the finest period of Italy as this ' Renaissance 1 of Gobineau's. The
glory and the shame of the revival of art and letters, the covetousness, the
cruelties, the licence, mixed up inextricably with the triumphs of painters,
architects, and poets ; the passionate desire for self-expression and for mastery
in natures that shrank from no crime, and cast morality and decency, honour
and fidelity to the dogs — these things, the visible demonstrations of the spirit of
that age, are brought out conspicuously by the author's genius, and the men
and women, in whom were the characteristic qualities of the time, live and move
before us on Gobineau's stage." — Yorkshire Post.

" We scarcely know whether to be more struck with the truth or liveliness of
these portraits. Savonarola, for example, is something more than the Savonarola
of history and tradition. Not only is the character of the man subtly brought
out ; not only are we made aware, for the first time, adequately, of that devour-
ing egotism which could see nothing but self as God's instrument, self as the
scourge of Florence, self as the inspired prophet ; but beneath all this and
vouching for it is the consciousness of the reality of the man, the consciousness
that his cries of distress are real cries, and his moments of fierce aspiration and
black despair genuine experiences. More touching and even more lifelike is the
figure of Michael Angelo, a figure in the main familiar to ns, but endowed with
advancing years with a peace of mind, a lucidity of intelligence, and a breadth
of sympathy such as were foreign to its young and stormy epoch. The last
scene between Michael Angelo and Vittoria Colonna is a noble one, and can be
read more than once with pleasure." — The Morning Post.

" A debt is due to Dr Oscar Levy for bringing before English readers this
translation of that great work of Count Gobineau, in which, through the medium
of the drama, he reveals his reverence for the spirit that inspired the Italian
Renaissance. The plays constituting the book are five in number, ' Savonarola,'
'Cesare Borgia,' 4 Julius II.,' 'Leo X.,' and 'Michael Angelo'— and nothing
more brilliant has appeared in recent times. In scope we can only compare
with it Mr Hardy's 'Dynasts,' but no more striking contrast could be con-
ceived than the creations of these two geniuses. Through the pages of these
plays moves the whole glittering pageant of the fifteenth and sixteenth cen-
turies, a mob of soldiers, priests, artists, men and women, slaying, plundering,
preaching, poisoning, painting, rioting, and loving, while out of the surgent
mass rise the figures of the splendid three, Borgia, Julius, and Michael Angelo,
dominating all by the sheer greatness of their ideas and their contempt for other
men's opinions. They are the great aristocrats of their time, and the five plays —
really one in conception — are an assertion of the saving grace of aristocracy, of
the glory of race, at a time when the democratic flood, whose source is
Christianity, was beginning to pour over Europe, to the overwhelming of all
greatness of thought and art. The translation, which is excellent, is by Paul
V- Cohn. —Glasgow Heral4.

OTHER NIETZSCHEAN LITERATURE

NIETZSCHE AND ART
By ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI
4j. dd.
(Constable & Co.)

In this work the reader will find all the matter included in Mr Ludo-
vici's stimulating course of lectures recently delivered at University
College, Gower Street, and a good deal more besides. " I have done
tvo things," says the author in his preface ; " I have given a detailed
account of Nietzsche's general art doctrine, and I have also applied
this doctrine to the graphic arts of to-day and of antiquity."

' The finest art, or the ruler art, as he calls it, is that in which the aristocratic
principles of culture, selection, precision, and simplicity are upheld, and this
art can he the flower and product only of a society in which an aristocratic order
is observed."— The Daily Telegraph.

ATTA TROLL
By HEINRICH HEINE
Translated by Herman Scheffauer
With an Introduction by Dr Oscar Levy
and

Pen-and-ink Sketches by Willy Pogany

3s. 6d.

(Sidgwick & Jackson)

" Atta Troll," Heine's favourite work, though written in 1842, is
full of modern significance. The hero is a revolutionary, demo-
cratic dancing-bear, whose ideas of equality and liberty form the
object of Heine's satire. The poem is a fascinating medley of Heine's
inimitable wit, lurking ironic mockery and exquisite poetry, with
touches of romance and tenderness.

The flowing, faithful, yet elastic translation preserves all the
vital charm and racy flavour of the original. Apart from its brilliant
narrative, the anti-demagogic spirit of the poem will strongly com-
mend itself to all admirers of Nietzsche and Gobineau.

This charming volume in a literary and artistic sense has met
with universal praise and admiration.

"... The translator is himself a gifted poet, and the tribute in Dr Oscar
Levy's Introduction to the remarkable degree in which he has rendered the
elusive wit, brilliance, and tenderness of the original is thoroughly deserved." —
Nottingham Guardian.

"The translation is really more like genius than cleverness." — Expository
Times.

OTHER NIETZSCHEAN LITERATURE

THE MASTERY OF LIFE

By G. T. WRENCH
i 5 j. net
(Duckworth)

This book is a review of the history of civilisation with the object
of discovering in the phrase of Nietzsche, " under what conditions
and where the plant man flourished best." The review shows thtt
the patriarchal family has always been the foundation of peoples,
who have been distinguished for their joy in and power over life,
and have expressed their joy and power in art works, which haze
been their peculiar glory and the object of admiration and wonder
of other peoples. On the other hand, peoples who have not based
themselves on the larger humanity of patriarchalism, and who
have not cultivated a masterful aristocracy, have been distinguished
by a weaker and often miserable attitude towards life, and by an
expression, not of power, joy, and quality, but of exhaustion,
pessimism, and doubts about the objects of existence.

The author contrasts the two types of peoples, the orderly and
artistic, and the dehumanised or mechanical, and shows how the
latter may hope to attain to the mastery of life, both social and
individual. But to carry out the change of social basis and values,
a new kind of men is needed, and this need leads the author in the
last pages to advocate as an essential preliminary the self-culture of
power and will, which Nietzsche taught so brilliantly through the
mouth of Zarathustra.

NIETZSCHE: HIS LIFE AND
WORKS
By ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI
Preface by Dr Oscar Levy
103 pages, is. net
(Constable & Co.)

In this short monograph on Nietzsche, Mr Ludovici not only gives
the reader a succinct account of the philosophy of the "Will to
Power " in all its main features ; but he also sketches in bold
strokes the groundwork of an attack on Darwin, Spencer, English
Materialism, and English Utilitarianism, which is perhaps the first
criticism of the kind ever attempted from a Nietzschean standpoint.

OTHER NIETZSCHE AN LITERATURE

RELIGIONS AND
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE EAST
By J. M. KENNEDY

Author of "The Quintessence of Nietzsche"

Crown Svo. 6s. net

(T. Werner Laurie, Clifford's Inn, London)

" All Wisdom came from the East," and all the wisdom of the East
is bound up in its religions and philosophies, the earliest forms of
which can be traced back 3000 years B.C. Mr J. M. Kennedy has
now aimed at giving in a single volume a concise history of the reli-
gions and philosophies which have influenced the thought of the great
eastern nations, special emphasis, of course, being laid upon the differ-
ent religions which have swayed the vast empire of India.

ENGLISH LITERATURE (1880-1905).

{Second Edition)

By J. M. KENNEDY

7*. 6d. net

(Sampson Low, Marston & Co.)

This book deals, from a psychological as well as a literary stand-
point, with such well-known writers as Wilde, Davidson, Shaw,
Wells, and Fiona Macleod, together with several authors who,
although influential in their particular circle, are less known to the
general public, such as Gissing and Ernest Dowson. As a guide to
many puzzling tendencies in recent English literature, the book
forms an invaluable document.

The name of the brilliant young writer has become widely known in
a comparatively short time by his vivid and racy criticism of English
politics, the English Church, and English literature. Mr Kennedy
was one of the first of English critics to recognise the necessity of
breaking with last century's liberal and romantic traditions. He
has in all his books tried to provide the Tory party, which allowed it-
self likewise to be infected by the spirit of the age, with a sound basis
of new ideas and principles.

OTHER NIETZSCHEAN LITERATURE

THE PHILOSOPHY OF
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

(Third Edition)

By H. L. MENCKEN

Demy 8vo, js. 6d. net

(Fisher Unwin)

A popular exposition of Nietzsche's ideas, showing their
application to current problems, together with an account
of his life, and chapters upon his origins and influence.

"An admirable manual." — Dr W. L. Courtney, in the Daily
Telegraph.

' ' One of the most interesting and instructive books that has come
from the American press in many a long day. Mr Mencken can
write. In addition, he has something to write about." — Educational
Review.

"A clear exposition, in vigorous, straightforward language, and a
really interesting and thoughtful biographical memoir." — Outlook.

' ' A very readable and clear account of the philosophy and the
philosopher."— New York Sun.

MEN v. THE MAN

By ROBERT RIVES LAMONTE and

H. L. MENCKEN

i2W<?, 251 pages, $1.35 net

(Henry Holt & Co., New York)

A SERIES of actual letters between a prominent American
Socialist and a Nietzschean Individualist. An earnest and
lively debate.

"No more brilliant and entertaining work has appeared in many
years." — Wilshire's Magazine.

"An epistolary duel between two well-equipped champions." —
International Socialist Review.

"Mencken's thinking and Mencken's writing delight me. I like
to see him hammer the dunces, the scholiasts, the hired bombasticos
of the pulpit and the lecture-room." — Percival Pollard, in Town
Ttpics.

OTHER NIETZSCHEAN LITERATURE

ON THE TRACKS OF LIFE:

THE IMMORALITY OF MORALITY
Translated from the Italian of Leo G. Sera by J. M. Kennedy
With an Introduction by Dr Oscar Levy
7s. 6a1. net
(John Lane)

Sera holds that the diffusion of democratic principles is vulgarising
science and art, and that present social conditions are leading to the in-
tellectual and moral degeneration of the race. Stimulating chapters
on Stendhal, Nietzsche, Goethe, The Origin of Society, Work, and
the Aristocratic Ideal, show current opinions of Genius, Aristocracy,
Democracy, Sport, and Sexuality in a new light. The audacity of
Dr Sera's theories has evoked much discussion in England and on the
Continent ; and his work is certain to appeal to all serious thinkers,
and to students of modern moral problems.

THE LIFE OF FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
VOLUME ONE

THE YOUNG NIETZSCHE

By Frau FOERSTER-NIETZSCHE
Translated by Anthony M. Ludovici

VOLUME TWO

THE LONELY NIETZSCHE

Translated by Paul V. Cohn, B.A.
Royal 8w, with Portraits, Price 1 net each
(Heinemann)

In an age given to a general tendency of levelling up and down, it
is particularly interesting to show the psychological and spiritual
development of genius, because it has been the tendency to belittle
the divine element among us. A first-hand account of the life of a
man of undoubted genius — undoubted even by his enemies and
detractors — must be of interest.

Frau Foerster-Nietzsche is admirably supplied with first-hand
documents and evidence, having from childhood collected everything
concerning her brother, who was only two years her senior. Her
method is perhaps best shown in the following paragraph : —

"From the days of my earliest childhood I always regarded my brother as the
highest authority. . . . But this reverence which I showed for Fritz and which,
throughout my childhood and youth brought me a lot of teasing and chaff — for
at heart I am not a believer in authority — certainly had one excellent practical
result in the shape of the Nietzsche archives, the extraordinary rich contents of
which have been collected by myself alone. From a very early age I have
always kept a treasure-drawer, in which I preserved whatever I could get hold
of that happened to come from my brother's pen, and had been discarded by him.
And if from the first he had not been so fond of burning things, and had not
occasionally made such raids upon my precious hoard, not one of his compositions
from the time he was eight years old would now be missing ; for when I was
only six, though I attached but slight importance to my own things, I had already
started this collection of my brother's productions."

OTHER NIETZSCHEAN LITERATURE

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE:
HIS LIFE AND WORK
By M. A. MUGGE, Ph.D.
i or. 6d. (Third Edition)
(Fisher Unwin)

To those who have already perused Dr Miigge's valuable
book the advent of a third edition will be more than welcome.

The detailed and fascinating story of Nietzsche's life
forms a fitting prelude to the scholarly sketch of the
brilliant poet-philosopher's works comprising the second
part of the volume. The author's keen critique, com-
bined with his absolutely just and unbiased appreciation
of Nietzsche's contribution to philosophical thought,
furnishes delightful reading in the third part, which portrays
the lonely genius as philosopher, poet, and prophet.

Almost invaluable to the student of Nietzsche is the
complete and accurate bibliography, at present the most
reliable compendium of English and foreign literature on
this subject obtainable.

THE QUINTESSENCE OF
NIETZSCHE
By J. M. KENNEDY

{Second Edition, Revised.) is. net
(T. Werner Laurie)

This book is valuable as giving not only the first full
account in English of Nietzsche's complete works, includ-
ing the recently published writings and fragments, but also
as the first application of the German philosopher's princi-
ples to English politics, the Church of England, Socialism,
Democracy, and to British Institutions in general.

OTHER NIETZSCHEAN LITERATURE

THE GOSPEL OF SUPERMAN

Translated from the French of
Prof. HENRI LICHTENBERGER

With an Introduction
by

J. M. KENNEDY
Extra Crown Svo, 232 pages , 5*. net

Prof. Lichtenberger's book, while containing sections
which form a good introduction to Nietzsche's philosophy, aims
at giving the reader a clear insight into the philosopher's psy-
chology; and his success may be inferred from the fact that the
book is now in its fourteenth French edition, and has been trans-
lated into German by Mrs Foerster-Nietzsche. Nietzsche's
descent and early training, his studies, his " intellectual eman-
cipation," and his philosophicalmessage,are all fully discussed,
while the results of recent research are admirably summed up
in the appendix, which, with a good bibliography, completes
the work.

NIETZSCHE IN OUTLINE AND APHORISM. By

A. R. Orage, Editor of The New Age. 176 pages. Fcap 8vo,

2S. 6d. net. (T. N. Foulis. )
Mr Orage has made his selection with care and judgment. His book gives
an excellent summary of Nietzsche's teaching, which many will be glad to
possess. " — Nation.

NIETZSCHE, The Dionysian Spirit of the Age. By A. R.
Orage. With Portrait. 83 pages. Crown 8vo, boards, is. net.
(T. N. Foulis.)

" This little book on Nietzsche is badly wanted in England . . . very inter-
esting and readable." — Fabian News.

T. N. FOULIS, PUBLISHER

91 GREAT RUSSELL STREET, LONDON, W.C
6* 15 FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURGH

OTHER NIETZSCHEAN LITERATURE

WHO IS TO BE MASTER OF
THE WORLD?

An Introduction to the Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche
{Second Edition)
By A. M. LUDOVICI
With a Preface by Dr Oscar Levy

Crown Svo, 216 pages, 25. 6d. net
(T. N. Foulis)

In this book the author has made a plain and lucid state-
ment of Nietzsche's views. The work embodies the Three
Lectures recently given at University College, London, and
other matter besides — together with copious references to
the numerous philosophers, historians, and scientists who
may be said to have led up to Friedrich Nietzsche's position.

"The Lectures are well worth reading, as showing what Nietzsche -
anism really means." — Glasgow Herald.

"If this little book does not impel some young and gallant spirits
to the works of the philosopher, I shall be surprised. . . . Mr
Ludovici shows such clearness, method, constructive art, as belong to
a master of exposition." — Westminster Gazette.

THE REVIVAL OF ARISTOCRACY

By Dr OSCAR LEVY

3<f. 6d. net
(Probsthain)

A fierce indictment of the philosophy of the nineteenth
century, and of the events which led to it. Special chapters
are devoted to Napoleon, Stendhal, Goethe, and Nietzsche.

"The ablest exposition of Nietzscheanism that has as yet appeared."
— Manchester Guardian.

"Here we see the philosophy of Nietzsche put into a concentrated
form, and set forth by a clever and biting pen." — Glasgow Herald.

OTHER NIETZSCHEAN LITERATURE

"NIETZSCHE"
By PAUL ELMER MORE
Price %\

(Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Co.)

This book, which is not written by an admirer but a critic of
Nietzsche, will be welcome to the reader as an independent opinion
on a much ventilated subject. The author's attempt to place
Nietzsche in the history of philosophy and to compare his works
with that of other writers, /. i. Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and the
Romantics, is novel and interesting.

The book, somewhat revised, likewise appears in the eighth
volume of the author's Shelburne Essays, published by the same
firm.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF NIETZSCHE

An Exposition and an Appreciation
By Dr G. CHATTERTON-HILL
{Second Edition) With a Preface by Dr Oscar Levy.
ys. 6d.

(Heath, Cranton & Ouseley Ltd.)

In this absorbing work Dr Chatterton-Hill has produced the most
readable exposition of the philosopher's teaching that has yet been
available for the general reader.

The student commencing the serious consideration of Nietzsche's
doctrine, the casual reader wishing to gain some intelligent notion
of the philosophy of the " Will to Power," and of the " Superman,"
the lover of good literature desirous of enjoying the entrancing
beauty of Nietzsche's style, have in this book a competent and
indispensable guide.

NIETZSCHE: SEIN LEBEN UND
SEINE WERKE

By RICHARD M. MEYER

M.io, bound, Af.12.50, 702 pages

(Oscar Beck, Munich)

This generous appreciation of Nietzsche by the famous German
professor, who ranks as the first literary critic of his country, should
be welcome to all English students conversant with the German
ongue.

PUBLISHER'S ANNOUNCEMENT

As this Nietzsche translation is now completed, the pub-
lisher begs to suggest to that part of the public which
takes the lead in matters of taste and intellect, that these
volumes should not be wanting in the library of any
cultured person. The antagonism to Nietzsche's teach-
ing, which first took the form of icy silence and afterwards
that of violent contradiction, has considerably diminished
since his real meaning has become more generally known
through this translation. The opinion is now gaining
ground that in Nietzsche's life-work a totally new stand-
point in matters of politics, art, literature, and theology
is to be found. Even his enemies now readily acknow-
ledge that Nietzsche at least wrote in an extraordinarily
vigorous and bracing style — a style which distinguishes
him from all dry-as-dust philosophers, especially those of
German origin. As the Yorkshire Weekly Post of ioth
June 191 1 has it: — "He stands out in the foggy firma-
ment of German thought like a bright particular star.
With the possible exception of Heine and Schopenhauer,
no one has wielded the German language to better
effect. . .

The translations have won high praise from press and
public. They have been written by scholars thoroughly
conversant with the German tongue, who have spared no
pains in rendering Nietzsche's passionate and poetic style
in adequate English. Valuable and original introductions
are added to each of the volumes, giving all particulars as
to dates, circumstances, Nietzsche's development, etc., so
that each volume may be bought separately.

An exhaustive index, such as exists in none of the nu-
merous translations, and not even in the German original,
has been added as a fitting coping-stone to what the Liver-
pool Courier has called " this monumental translation."

T. N. FOULIS, PUBLISHER

91 GREAT RUSSELL STREET, LONDON, 6° 1 5 FREDERICK
STREET, EDINBURGH

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